


blood in the streets of paris

by moogle62



Category: Les Misérables (2012), Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Vampire, Blood Drinking, Blood and Injury, Crying, Domestic Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Past Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Recovery, Soul Bond
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-01-02
Updated: 2015-04-11
Packaged: 2018-03-04 22:42:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 21,917
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3094670
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moogle62/pseuds/moogle62
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>The door swings open and Enjolras, wild-eyed, stands at the threshold. There is blood on his shirt and on his hands and on - </i>god<i>, Grantaire thinks - on his <i>mouth</i>. </i></p>
<p><i>As loud as he was a moment ago, hammering on Grantaire’s door, Enjolras can’t seem to find his voice. He looks over Grantaire’s shoulder at the tiny flat like it’s completely out of his reach and Grantaire </i>knows<i>, understanding blossoming through him like the pain of being kicked in the gut, what Enjolras needs.</i></p>
<p>  <i>“You can come in,” he says, and holds the door open wide.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> LOOK all I wanted was to write something where Enjolras cried and I ended up with this vampire au somehow. IF I KNEW HOW, WE WOULD NOT ALL BE HERE TODAY. Anyway here we are and here is this and I am posting it as a WIP just to make myself finish the damn thing. I've tried to tag for the fic as a whole rather than by parts so if something is tagged but isn't immediately happening, it's definitely on its way! (the crying especially. who do you even think I am.)
> 
> Despite all... those tags, I swear this is actually a non-traumatic stupid get together fic about pining. PROMISE.
> 
> Many countless thanks to laliandra, torakowalski, and nashicreep for falling down this rabbit hole with me and for generally encouraging/allowing this to continue happening to them.
> 
> Trigger warnings in the end notes for those that would like <3

As painfully cliched as it sounds, it all starts on a dark and stormy night.

It’s two in the morning and by some miracle Grantaire is actually asleep. Or, he _was_ , before someone decided that sleep was too good for the feckless, insomniac likes of him and proved it by trying to beat down his door.

(Later, people will ask Grantaire whether he would have still answered the door if he had known what was going to happen. They will ask him in the way that always mean they’re fishing for dirt, naysayers from the press hoping for a scoop. Grantaire has never been the sort to play into the hands of journalists and he tells them the truth every time and sometimes just to make Enjolras roll his eyes.

If he had known what was going to happen, he would have known who was knocking and Grantaire was always going to answer for Enjolras.)

Grantaire’s flat is a studio, little big enough for his bed and what he’s charitably calling a galley kitchen, but even still it takes him a minute to stumble, bleary-eyed, to the door. The person on the other side doesn’t stop knocking like their world is ending.

“All _right_ ,” Grantaire calls, sounding sleep-hoarse even to himself. “I’m _coming_ , give it a rest.” He fumbles the door off the chain and turns the lock without once looking through the peephole. Eponine would have a fit if she were here but she _isn’t_ here so Grantaire can be as reckless as he likes.

The door swings open and Enjolras, wild-eyed, stands at the threshold. There is blood on his shirt and on his hands and on - _god_ , Grantaire thinks - on his _mouth_. 

As loud as he was a moment ago, hammering on Grantaire’s door, Enjolras can’t seem to find his voice. He looks over Grantaire’s shoulder at the tiny flat like it’s completely out of his reach and Grantaire _knows_ , understanding blossoming through him like the pain of being kicked in the gut, what Enjolras needs.

“You can come in,” he says, and holds the door open wide.

//

There have been vampires in Paris as long as there has been a Paris to name. No one bats an eyelid about it really, not any more, but Enjolras - Enjolras has been the cornerstone of the Equality movement for as long as Grantaire has known him. Their words as unbitten bear more weight, he insists, and as much as they might all like to deny it, they know it’s true. No one is going to listen to a bitten person asking for higher wages, just like no one would listen to an alcoholic begging for another drink.

Grantaire last saw Enjolras just a few hours ago at the Musain when the only red on him was his jacket, his siren call of colour, the only blood on him the flush in his cheeks as he rose to his feet to argue a point. Now, Enjolras steps unsteadily into Grantaire’s flat and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. He is very pale and the blood on his skin is very, very red. 

_Shit_ , Grantaire thinks, fervently, and closes the door.

“I,” Enjolras starts, jerkily, in stark, awful contrast to his usual self, “I was - “

Grantaire shakes his head. “It’s okay,” he says. “I don’t need to know.” He stays where he is, keeps the distance Enjolras put between them. In the back of his mind, in the small, traitorous place that is usually busy whispering to him where the nearest bottle is, he doesn’t want to move away from the door, from the ready exit.

Enjolras takes one sharp, shuddering breath and then another. When he next speaks, his voice is low. “I can smell blood.”

“Of course you can,” Grantaire says. “You’re covered in it. If you couldn’t smell it there’d probably be something wrong. Something other than you turning up at my door looking like you’ve run through an abattoir, which is obviously the bigger problem here, but you know. Olfactory problems are problems too. What do you call a dog with no nose, and all that.” He’s aware he’s babbling but whatever, it’s his thing when he’s under stress. And all the other times. “Smell is important,” he continues. “You can’t taste things if you can’t smell them. I read that somewhere.”

At the word _taste_ , Enjolras’ whole body flinches. “No,” he says. Even that one word sounds considered, like he’s fighting for every syllable to come out steady. His fists are clenched tight at his sides. “I can smell your blood.”

Grantaire, already pressed against the door, freezes stock still. “Okay,” he says, for the sheer sake of saying something, distracting himself. “Well, that’s about as terrifying as you’d expect.” He wets his lips. He’s come this far, he thinks, and asks, “What does it smell like?”

Enjolras laughs like something fracturing. “Good,” he admits, lifting a hand to cover his eyes. “It smells good.”

Well, _wonderful_. 

Of all the ways Grantaire has imagined Enjolras turning up at his flat in the middle of the night and telling him he smells good - of which there are a wider range than Grantaire is ever going voluntarily going to admit to anyone - _as a newly turned vampire_ was notably nowhere on the fucking list. Still, Grantaire thinks, as Enjolras continues to hide his eyes, Enjolras _has_ turned up. He came here, to Grantaire, and the least Grantaire can do is actually _be_ here.

He fumbles for his phone and keys out a fast text to Combeferre. 

_Come quickly it’s E_

The reply comes almost instantaneously. _On my way_.

Combeferre’s not a nocturnal person by nature so he must have been waiting up for Enjolras. Grantaire’s stomach clenches to think of it: patient Combeferre awake to be Enjolras’s emergency call and Enjolras out god knows where with someone’s teeth in his throat.

Now that he’s not just going to be alone forever in a room with an edgy vampire like some idiot who’s never seen a horror movie, Grantaire takes a careful step away from the door. “Okay,” he says. “I’m going to come closer now, okay? I’m just telling you this so that you can, I don’t know, hold your breath or whatever. Let’s just - only one of us needs a brush with death tonight and clearly you’ve drawn that straw.”

Enjolras doesn’t move. Grantaire takes that as a good sign and keeps going, taking another step towards him in the middle of the room. He keeps talking, as much to signal his whereabouts as anything else. “And of course I smell good. Who could resist this subtle musk?” He’s drawing closer to Enjolras. “Mmm, chinese food and paint. What a combination.”

Grantaire comes to a halt a few steps away. “Okay,” he says again. “How are you doing? Are you feeling....” he bares his teeth even though Enjolras is still not looking at him, “... bitey?”

More slowly than Grantaire would really like in this situation, Enjolras shakes his head.

“We need to get you cleaned up,” Grantaire tells him. “The blood - “ He breaks off, thinking better of it. Who says _blood_ to the newly bitten? Idiots, that is who. Idiots, masochists, and Grantaire, who is proving himself to be both. He waves a hand at Enjolras instead. “All this isn’t helping.”

Enjolras lets his hand drop. Grantaire waits and Enjolras finally looks up.

“All right,” he says.

Grantaire exhales in relief. “The bathroom’s over there,” he says, pointing. “You can’t miss it, it’s the only door.”

Enjolras goes when Grantaire has pointed him. Grantaire’s bathroom is small enough that he could wash his hands in the sink while he’s standing under the shower spray if he wanted. The room is barely as wide as Grantaire’s armspan and he finds it a tight squeeze himself some mornings, when hangovers make coordination challenging. There’s definitely not room for two fully grown adults in there unless they’re willing to get _really_ friendly and Grantaire tries his hardest not to get that close to Enjolras under normal circumstances, like, the ones where the possibility of Enjolras wanting to rip his throat out would be metaphorical instead of upsettingly, messily, literal. 

But Enjolras is moving slowly and he’s barely spoken a word since he got here and Grantaire doesn’t know if he’ll be able to get the blood off himself without - well, whatever it is he might do, to himself or to Grantaire, Grantaire definitely doesn’t want it on his conscience. Or on his bathroom, if he’s honest, because he likes cleaning about as much as he likes guilt.

Grantaire squares his shoulders and follows Enjolras inside.

The smell of blood is stronger once they’re both crammed into the tiny room. It’s overpowering even for Grantaire, who has cut himself shaving in here more than once and who is not currently experiencing his first rearing of an addiction summoned by the undeniable presence of its object. He sees when it hits Enjolras, sees his taut white face turn sick. And hungry.

“Oh,” Enjolras breathes, turning fully towards Grantaire for the first time tonight. His eyes are suddenly very dark, his pupils blown wide and wanting. He starts forward, moving in the smooth, persuasive way school children are taught to spot, to fear.“Grantaire.”

Panic finally hits Grantaire. He’s been keeping it at bay from the moment he saw Enjolras on the other side of the door but now it strikes as unforgivingly as any of the bitten creatures roaming the midnight streets. Enjolras draws closer and Grantaire strikes out, shoving Enjolras away from him with a strength that must be solely adrenaline, reaching out desperately for the shower dial and wrenching the water on.

The sound of the water hitting the floor feels like bell chimes welcoming the morning, a clear and present signal that the night has moved on and the danger has passed. 

Enjolras stands under the shower as still as if he’s been cursed into stone. Grantaire watches him, warily, counting all the breaths in which Enjolras does not start forward again, in which the water runs clearer and clearer of blood and Enjolras does not move like he’s hunting something he could easily wound. The air smells cleaner with the shower running and the small bathroom feels less oppressive. Grantaire is shaking, he realizes, as steam begins to billow around the room. He’s shaking and that won’t do either of them any good.

Warily, still watching Enjolras, Grantaire drags the shower dial to cold. Enjolras gasps when the temperature changes and the sound of it is like breaking a spell; he shivers, drenched to the skin now, and he looks enough like a human again that Grantaire feels safe enough to peel himself away from the tiled wall, to take hold of one of Enjolras’s bloodied hands.

“Don’t look,” he instructs Enjolras, proud that his voice holds firm. “You’ll just like it, I’m sure, and then where will we be?”

Enjolras nods and looks away. 

Whatever his own feelings on the matter, Grantaire has to look. He has to watch himself rub the blood from Enjolras’s fingers, see his own paintbrush-calloused hands link with Enjolras’s as the shower runs inexorably over them, like a blessing. Grantaire grits his teeth and doesn’t let himself think about it, doesn’t stop until the job is done and Enjolras’s hands are as clean as he can get them.

“How are you doing?” Grantaire asks, trying to sound as jovial as he can. “Am I safe?”

The answer is obviously _no_ , of course he isn’t safe, he’s alone in a tiny room with a bitten person clearly on the very edges of his untested control, but if Enjolras says he is then Grantaire is going to trust him. His self-preservation has always been shockingly low when it comes to Enjolras.

Enjolras nods again. “You’re safe,” he says, the first words he’s managed since the water hit him and he started looking less like a wolf on the first night of a full moon. Water is running down Enjolras’s neck in bloody red rivulets, streaming thickly enough that even this close Grantaire can’t see the bite wound underneath. 

“All right,” Grantaire says, summoning up the flash of a smile. “I believe you.” He takes a breath, needs to steel himself for the next part. It’s not the potential mortal danger that’s the problem, much as he might wish it were. “The next part’s the hardest,” he says, and steps forward.

He’s close enough now that he can feel the rise and fall of Enjolras’s chest as he breathes, feel the way his breath turns careful and deliberate as Grantaire draws near.

“Easy,” Grantaire warns, and as he moves Enjolras’s collar to one side, Enjolas gives a sudden hitching gasp.

Grantaire draws back immediately, hands in the air. “Oh god, what is it? Can you smell me again?”

Enjolras shakes his head, slowly. He’s been doing everything slowly since he arrived, like he’s using all of his control in every movement, fighting something primal and instinctive. For the first few weeks of recovery Grantaire felt like that too, like every single moment he didn’t reach for a drink was something he had to fight for and earn. Hell, he still sometimes feels like that. He can’t imagine what it would be like to fight that pull if it was buried as deep and unshakeable in him as the bitten’s unquenchable thirst for blood.

“We need to get the blood off your throat,” Grantaire explains. “It’s only making this harder for you. I can do it, if you like, or…”

Enjolras raises his hands to his own throat. His fingers curve protectively over one side of his neck and Grantaire realizes that must be where he was bitten. He wonders what it feels like, if it hurt then, if it still hurts now. 

“Does it hurt?” he blurts out, before he can stop himself. Enjolras looks up at him and so Grantaire elaborates. “You know,” he says, waving a hand in a way that, to him, is communicating _your recent neck gnaw marks_ but to Enjolras probably is not. “Your.... neck…. thing.”

Neck thing. Grantaire is a fucking master of eloquence tonight.

Enjolras nods again, his mouth a tight line. It really must hurt, Grantaire thinks, with a shock like he’s the one standing under the cold shower, for Enjolras to admit it so readily. Either that, or he thinks pain is an easier response to admit than the truth.

Everyone hears the stories when they’re old enough. Vampire bites aren’t just good for the vampire, or so it goes, and Grantaire has definitely seen his share of terrible mock-Dracula porn parodies because he’s got fast internet and a faster curiosity. Grantaire very determinedly keeps his gaze above waist height. This situation is messy enough as it is without adding, like, vampire sex pheromones further into the mix.

“We just need to get the blood off you,” Grantaire repeats, more gently. “Do you want me to - “

“No,” Enjolras says, whip sharp. Grantaire flinches, despite himself, and Enjolras looks like it scores right through him. “No,” he says, quieter this time. “No, thank you. I’ve - I’ll do it.”

That’s probably for the best but Grantaire can’t help but feel -- weirdly, masochistically -- disappointed.

“All right,” he nods. “Do you need me to stay?”

Enjolras thinks about it. Grantaire would stay without question or pause but the longer he’s under the water the more Enjolras looks like his faculties are slowly clearing, the haze of blood and new, unknown thirst washing away from him and Grantaire could stand to stop being in the same room as a dripping wet Enjolras while it’s the early hours of the morning and he might do something that fully conscious Grantaire would have to live down.

“No,” Enjolras decides, eventually. “But - could you wait nearby?”

“It’s a small flat,” Grantaire says, playing it off like it’s no big deal, like Enjolras asks him for something every day, like he’s ever heard Enjolras ask for anything for himself before. “I don’t exactly have a choice.”

Grantaire is almost out of the room when he hears Enjolras say, low and sincere, barely audible under the sound of the shower, “Thank you.”

Grantaire closes the bathroom door and, for the first time that night, feels a little sick.

//

While Grantaire is hovering by the bathroom door and trying not to feel too much like a creeper, it suddenly hits him that he wasn’t expecting company. The painting he’s working on is huge and noticeable on his easel, the finished ones propped against the walls to dry. It’s not that Grantaire is shy about showing his work, it’s just that he has to be ready and with Enjolras he feels anything but.

He’s just finished turning the last painting around when Enjolras steps back into the room. Grantaire whirls around fast at the sound of the door opening and then wishes he’d taken his time if only so he’d have had longer to wrangle his face into a slightly more neutral expression that whatever it’s doing now. Enjolras has left his shoes and soaked shirt in the bathroom and he’s standing in Grantaire’s one room flat barefoot and stripped to the waist, his wet hair dripping down his shoulders, his chest, his back. 

Grantaire is not desperately in love with Enjolras no matter what their friends like to say but he likes him, likes him more and differently than he does the others, in a way he can’t quite pin down. Additionally to that, he does have _eyes_ and Enjolras looks - well. Enjolras looks like something Grantaire wants to sketch until his hand is cramping and every line is perfect, like a painting for which Grantaire would fill all the negative space with gold.

Admittedly when he thinks things like that Grantaire can see why his friends think he’s secretly pining but it is gone three in the morning and Enjolras is standing half-naked in the same room as Grantaire’s bed, so he thinks he can be forgiven, just this once.

Grantaire has not had enough sleep to be the responsible one in this conversation. However, Combeferre hasn’t arrived yet and Enjolras is probably a bit busy dealing with his very recent vampiric transformation so, sadly for everyone, Grantaire has no choice.

“How was that?” Grantaire asks, when he realizes neither of them have said anything yet, and hopes it doesn’t sound too much like he’s asking if Enjolras got himself off in Grantaire’s shower. Presumably neither of them need to be contending with that idea on top of everything else.

“It helped,” Enjolras says. He looks scrubbed clean, almost raw, and he sounds less like he’s fighting himself to keep control of his every word. “Thank you,” he says, again. “I appreciate it.”

Grantaire has no idea what to do with that. There’s a hoodie of his thrown over the sofa, at least relatively clean, and he hands it to Enjolras. 

“Here,” he says, in lieu of anything else. “You’ll get cold.”

As Enjolras shrugs it on, Grantaire catches sight of the bite for the first time. It’s an ugly thing, right at the juncture between throat and shoulder, ragged like Enjolras fought against the teeth in his skin. It’s going to scar, Grantaire can tell, and badly. He doesn’t look away fast enough; when Enjolras emerges from the hoodie, hair rumpled, he sees Grantaire looking. His face sets.

They both start speaking at the same time.

“I’m not going to ask,” Grantaire starts, right as Enjolras says, “I suppose you’ll want to know -”

They both break off.

“You first,” Grantaire says. It seems inevitable, after all. 

Enjolras says, with a twist to his mouth, “I suppose you’ll want to know what happened.”

“No, god,” Grantaire says immediately. “Not if you don’t want to tell me.” He pauses. “Also, I already know how that story ends, so. Why go over the middle bits? That’d be boring.” 

“Thank you,” Enjolras says again, a little stiltedly.

Grantaire nods. “Dude, it’s fine. Who am I to turn away a friend in need at two in the morning? I’ve been that guy. I know what it’s like when the door doesn’t open.”

Enjolras doesn’t seem to know what to say to that, which is a first.

An odd silence falls. This is the first time Enjolras has been to Grantaire’s flat and Grantaire becomes suddenly aware of the take-out cartons he hasn’t thrown away yet, the laundry he hasn’t done, the way Enjolras’s eyes flit to his glass recycling bin. It’s empty, Grantaire knows, and he hasn’t touched a drop for months but he feels himself turn a dull, guilty red all the same. 

He says the first thing he can think of just to break the moment. “Hey, also, I texted Combeferre so he’s on his way - what? What’s that face for?”

“He’s coming here?” Grantaire hadn’t noticed Enjolras had relaxed before until now, seeing Enjolras holding himself tense and readied, all his muscles in tight, defensive lines. 

“Yeah, that’s what I said. What? Don’t you want him to?”

Enjolras turns sharply on his heel and starts to pace the length of the room. “No, of course not,” he says.

Grantaire stays where he is, keeping a wary eye on Enjolras. “Why?” 

“Do you think I want him to know about this?” Enjolras comes to a sudden, angry stop. “Do you think I want him to know _what I did?_ ”

Grantaire thinks, _what_ did _you do_ , but he bites it back. He’s all for provoking Enjolras under regular circumstances but even he has to admit that sometimes there is a time and a place for these things and this is clearly not one of them. 

He shrugs instead. “It’s not like you’re going to be able to hide it from him,” he points out. “You live together.”

Enjolras’s face bunches in fury. Even as Grantaire watches, Enjolras’s teeth grow sharp. 

Grantaire takes a hasty step back, throwing his hands up. “Hey,” he says, “or not, whatever. Totally your choice. No one is making you come out of the coffin. As it were.” He hesitates, watching Enjolras stare him down. “Are we cool? Can we maybe ix-nay with the angs-fay?”

Enjolras looks blank.

Grantaire gestures to his own mouth, baring his teeth in an approximation of fangs. “I don’t feel the most safe while you’re, you know, going all Nosferatu over there.”

“I didn’t - “ Enjolras cuts himself off. He frowns and then, slowly, painfully slowly, his teeth return to normal. “I didn’t realize,” he says. 

“I should hope not,” Grantaire says.

Enjolras nods, stiffly. “This is still very new,” he says. “It’s proving more difficult than - “ he cuts himself off. Grantaire wonders how he was going to finish that sentence. More difficult than he’d wanted? Expected? Than he’d hoped?

“Hey,” Grantaire says, when Enjolras remains silent, “So you don’t have a handle on it yet - you’ll get there. It’s been what, hours since you were bitten? No one expects anyone to be an expert in this shit right away. Not even you.” He pauses, weighing up the risks of what he wants to say and then thinks, _fuck it_. “That’s why you should tell Combeferre.”

“ _Grantaire_.” Enjolras takes a hard step towards him but draws back, hands raised, as Grantaire backs up too. “Sorry,” he says, immediately. “I’m sorry.”

Grantaire takes a second for his heart to stop looping around inside his chest before he can answer. “See?” he says. “That’s progress. If you can do that with me you can definitely do that with Combeferre.” He grins. “He’s not nearly as irritating as I am, for a start.”

Enjolras is pacing again. It’s weirdly unnerving to see him so uncommunicative.

“There are people who can help, you know,” says Grantaire. “I mean, I know you know that. You know _all_ the bitten assistance groups, for Christ’s sake. This doesn’t have to be so hard.”

“Yes, it does!” Enjolras spits. 

“Why?” Grantaire shouts back.

This is more like it. As dangerous as this is - provoking the _newly bitten_ , Christ, Grantaire is lucky he isn’t already vampire chow - this is the most relaxed Grantaire has felt since the knock at his door. This is familiar, this is normal. The back and forth, the raised voices, the prickle of tension in the air - it’s like the air clearing for a storm. 

“Because I _work for them_!” Enjolras shouts, flushed with temper. “I’ve spent my _life_ campaigning for bitten equality. It’s everything I’ve been writing about for _years_. How is it going to look if I turn up and ask for help now?”

“Enjolras,” Grantaire says, trying hard to keep his voice even. “I don’t see the problem with you expecting to be treated the same way as you would treat someone else.”

Enjolras is looking at him like he’s grown an extra head. Such is the strength of Enjolras’s scorn that, sometimes, Grantaire wants to check that he hasn’t. 

“It’ll look _weak_ ,” Enjolras snaps. “Who’s going to listen to what I have to say if they think I’m only talking about myself?”

Grantaire rocks back on his heels. “Wow, okay,” he says. “Do you ever listen to yourself when you talk? The world doesn’t live and die on your every word. Things are going to change if they’re going to change and you being - “ he pauses, but steams on, “ _bitten_ won’t make one bit of difference.”

“Of course it will!” Enjolras, for the first time tonight, looks truly savage, that particular brand of human ferocity that lights him up like a fucking beacon. When Grantaire pictures Enjolras, he thinks about him like this, fighting and fiery. “I can only make a difference if people listen.”

“They’ll listen to you if you _make them listen_ ,” Grantaire insists. “I can’t believe I’m the one telling you this. What’s _happened_ to you?”

The moment the words leave his mouth, he wishes he could take them back. 

Enjolras gives an awful laugh. “You know what’s happened to me,” he says. “You’ve seen it.”

Grantaire suddenly, forcibly, remembers the ugly bite lurking under Enjolras’s collar, its torn edges not yet sewing together. He’s been ripped apart tonight, Grantaire thinks. Someone sank their teeth into Enjolras and tore him apart and then he came to Grantaire.

For whatever reason, when he was bloodied and shaken, Enjolras came to Grantaire.

Grantaire makes himself take a breath. “You’re right,” he says. He flashes Enjolras a smile, softer now. “And I hope you enjoyed that, because I’m not saying it again.”

“I wouldn’t bet on that,” Enjolras says. He quirks an eyebrow. “But I’ll be sure and cherish the moment, just in case.”

For a second, standing there almost a room apart, it’s like there’s nothing unusual going on at all. It feels so easy, so natural, for the two of them to light each other up.

Enjolras looks like he’s about to say something else, the corners of his mouth gentling to a gentler expression, but then his whole body stiffens and he draws back to the far wall. “Combeferre’s here,” he hisses.

Grantaire almost asks if he’s sure but Enjolras is pressing his hands flat against the wall behind him like he’s seeking a restraint and his pupils are blown huge and dark. It hits Grantaire with a sickening suddenness that in calling over Combeferre to keep himself safe, he’s dragged someone else into the fray.

He darts over to the door and throws the bolt again, just as Combeferre knocks.

Across the room, Enjolras _growls_.

“Grantaire?” Combeferre calls.

Grantaire glances over his shoulder. Enjolras is braced like he’s fighting a weight too heavy for him to bear, breathing hard, and Grantaire puts a hand out to him, says, “Hey, hey, it’s okay. I won’t let him in.” He pauses. “You know I have to tell him something, don’t you? He’s not going to wait outside if he knows you’re not okay. None of us would.”

Enjolras’s pupils are blown huge and dark like an animal’s in the night. “Tell him, then,” he says. “But don’t let him in.” Hesitating for only a moment, he adds, tight-lipped: “Please.”

“Of course,” Grantaire says, knee-jerk. “Whatever you need.”

//

Combeferre, to his credit, stays put when Grantaire slips into the corridor, opening the door only enough that he can squeeze outside and definitely not enough for anyone to peer through.

“Is he okay?” Combeferre demands, as soon as Grantaire appears.

“No,” Grantaire says, and then, immediately back-tracking, “I mean yes, _yes_ , god, not like that, he’s okay.”

Combeferre blows out a frustrated breath. “Then what, Grantaire?” 

Grantaire hesitates. It’s gone three in the morning and it shows on Combeferre, in the circles under his eyes, the wrinkles in his clothes. Grantaire thinks of Enjolras’s slide into predatory ease of movement, his usual staunch strength instead a wily, insidious, charm that he keeps fighting back.

He locks the door behind him, and tells Combeferre everything.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Grantaire doesn’t ask what Enjolras is reading and Enjolras doesn’t ask what he’s drawing and the time passes. It’s companionable in a way that seems almost alien for them, a pocket of domestic friendship so far removed from their usual open flame interactions that Grantaire didn’t even let himself consider it at his darkest, his drunkest. Sober, it’s almost more than Grantaire can bear, this simple, sweet moment they have raised up between them, held together by the fading light of the sun._
> 
> _It doesn't last, of course._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's the next part before I go back to work! I'm aiming to get about a chapter done a week after this. Thanks for the support so far, it's been amazing. 
> 
> As ever, trigger warnings in the end notes for those that would like. <3

Combeferre is clutching his phone to his ear hard enough that Grantaire can see his knuckles turn white. They’re sitting side by side in the corridor, staring at Grantaire’s locked front door, and on the other side of that is Enjolras, bitten and alone. Grantaire has refused to let Combeferre in and Combeferre hasn’t spoken to him since, dialing Enjolras with fast, shaking hands instead and sinking down to the corridor floor.

“Okay,” Combeferre is saying, in the unbearably gentle way only he is ever allowed to use with Enjolras. “Okay, I understand.” There’s a pause. “No, I didn’t say I agree, I said I understand.”

Grantaire fidgets. The harsh electric light in the hallway is slowly lifting with the first light of sun and Combeferre suddenly stands up, turning on Grantaire.

“Give me the key,” he demands. It takes Grantaire a second to clue in but he’s on his feet as soon as he does, turning the key in the lock his own damn self and throwing open the door.

That’s the thing about getting the bite. The need for blood only rises in the night, hitting hard and treacherous like frost under a cloudless sky, leaving the bitten wholly themselves under the light of the sun. 

Enjolras is right there, only paces away from the open door, and there’s colour in his face again, real, human colour. He’s clutching his own phone like a lifeline. He looks as vulnerable as Grantaire has ever, ever seen him, at such odds with the usual hard lines Grantaire associates with Enjolras, vehement in discussion.

Combeferre drops his phone and pushes past Grantaire, rushing at Enjolras, wrapping him straight up in his arms. Enjolras clings on tight and immediately, dipping his head to the curve of Combeferre’s shoulder.

“Easy,” Combeferre is muttering, almost too quietly for Grantaire to hear. “Easy now.”

Enjolras shudders visibly. “I’m sorry,” he says, muffled by Combeferre’s skin, but Combeferre just shakes him, says, “Don’t you dare.” 

Enjolras makes a sound like the ragged start of a laugh and then they both fall quiet. There’s such trust there, such uncomplicated intimacy, that Grantaire almost has to turn away. This is not for him to see.

He doesn’t stop looking, though. He never does.

//

The saying goes that things always seem darkest at night but that has never been Grantaire’s experience. It’s easier to run worst case scenarios at night, admittedly, a frantic worry in the dark, but daylight has a way of letting that ceaseless anxious thrum give way to a resignation that’s equally hard to bear.

As Combeferre and Enjolras have a hurried, sotto-voiced conversation in Grantaire’s pokey kitchen, Grantaire thinks about all the things he knows about how the bitten get treated, all the things the ABC is trying to change.

Employers don’t like to hire staff that they imagine roaming the streets like hunters at night and can’t count on to turn up in the mornings. Roommate applications get turned down. Relationships fail. It comes down to trust, in the end, and people don’t like to work with or to live with people they can think about with blood on their mouths. It’s an old, stupid prejudice that lingers in the law courts and comes out in the most mundane ways, like refusing bitten people marriage licenses. 

Enjolras has been fighting these injustices and all the endless others of them with his every fibre since Grantaire first met him at a Bitten Rights rally and Grantaire can’t bear to see him brought down by his own body testing his convictions.

“You can stay here,” Grantaire blurts, without really making the conscious decision to speak.

Combeferre and Enjolras break apart, though Combeferre keeps a tight grip on Enjolras’s hand. 

“For the night,” Grantaire clarifies, when they both look blank. “You can stay here at night, if you like.” 

Enjolras seems about to protest and Grantaire _can’t_ , he can’t hear Enjolras argue against his own interests right now, not when he’s just rinsed blood from Enjolras’s hands and seen him hide away in horror from his own best friend. Call him self-sacrificing, call him masochistic, call him whatever, but Grantaire is not going to sit here and les Enjolras do something he’ll hate himself for when Grantaire knows all too well what that feels like in the morning.

“You didn’t hurt me last night,” Grantaire explains. “You could have, but you didn’t. I know you’ll be worried about hurting someone else tonight - don’t argue about it, I know you, I _know_ you are - and if you’re here the only person you could hurt is me.”

He can’t think about Enjolras cooped in his room in his and Combeferre’s apartment, terrified of hurting his friend, can’t think about him on the streets forcing himself to turn away from the pulse of blood just under strangers’ skin just to keep himself to his own stern disciplinary standards. If they’ve weathered one night without Enjolras hurting Grantaire, if he came to Grantaire when he was dazed and newly bitten, Grantaire is damn well going to keep him here until he feels safer being elsewhere.

To Grantaire’s confusion, Enjolras looks suddenly furious. “ _What_?” he demands. “What do you mean, ‘the only person I could hurt is you’?” Combeferre lays a hand carefully on Enjolras’s arm but Enjolras shakes him off without glancing over. “I don’t want to hurt anyone. Not _anyone_ , and especially not one of us.”

“But I’m not one of us,” Grantaire argues, knowing the buttons he’s aiming for, knowing what gets under Enjolras’s skin and sticks. “Not really, not like the rest of you.” 

“You are,” Enjolras bites out. “Of course you are.”

“Enjolras,” Combeferre says, gently. “Is this the time?”

“Of course it’s the time,” Enjolras says. “Of _course_ Grantaire is one of us.”

“Then as _one of us_ ,” Grantaire says, pushing his advantage, “I want to make sure you don’t do something you’ll regret.”

Enjolras is unyielding. “I might regret something I do with you,” he says, cold-voiced. “It’s not like you’re known for making the right choices, after all.” 

Very deliberately, Enjolras eyes Grantaire’s empty glass recycling bin. 

Grantaire feels himself flush deep red, brighter than the blood on Enjolras’s mouth not hours ago. He takes three angry steps forward to get into Enjolras’s space: Combeferre moves forward to put himself between the two of them but Enjolras elbows by him impatiently, nothing but easily crossed inches between him and Grantaire.

“Don’t you dare,” Grantaire hisses. “You don’t get to play that card, not ever, and especially not now.” He’s breathing hard and he’s definitely going to say something he shouldn’t, but this is familiar, burns under his skin like every argument he and Enjolras have ever kept the Musain open after hour to have viciously out between them. It’s the most violent thing this apartment has seen tonight and it’s _good_ , cleansing the air like fire across unproductive land.

“Why shouldn’t I?” Enjolras says, folding his arms. “It’s nothing that isn’t true.”

Grantaire is shaking, actually shaking. “Because,” he says, surprising even himself with the anger in his voice, “you’ll know soon enough what it feels like to need a drink.” Enjolras’s face shuts down hard, any emotion, any rage Grantaire has provoked out of him disappearing like blowing out a light. “At least I didn’t have to hurt anyone to get what I needed,” Grantaire finishes, and it doesn’t feel good at all.

Enjolras takes a measured breath. Combeferre is impassive by his side and Grantaire does not feel good about himself at all.

But then: “All right,” says Enjolras, slowly. “I’ll be here tonight.”

Grantaire is just as taken aback as Combeferre looks. “What?” he says. “You will?”

“You will?” Combeferre echoes. “Enjolras, you need - “

“I know what I need,” Enjolras says. Folded arms, chin high, he looks every inch the comet of a man that Grantaire has watched people follow into social revolution. “I’ll be here.”

//

_sent and received between 6.30 and 6.35 am, after Combeferre and Enjolras have left and while Grantaire is hiding almost entirely under his quilt in an upsettingly obvious attempt at denial of the entire night:_

**courfeyrac**  
shit man I just heard

**courfeyrac**  
good on you for stepping up

**courfeyrac**  
maybe wear scarves to save your pretty neck? ;)

**grantaire**  
shut up or it’s your pretty neck you’ll be worried about

//

“Let me get this straight,” Eponine says, as Grantaire hides his head in his hands. “Enjolras is going to be staying with you for a while?”

Grantaire mutely nods. 

“In your tiny flat?”

He nods again.

“You’re staying together in your stupid tiny flat for reasons you can’t tell me.”

Grantaire nods again. He’s had his face hidden long enough that it’s starting to get hot behind his hands. As soon as it got properly light outside, he had abandoned any pretence that he was ever going to get any more sleep and fled for Eponine’s. Eponine, Cosette and Marius live above Eponine’s bar in some nauseatingly lovely polyamorous take on Cheers and they always let Grantaire in if he looks tragic enough.

Today, he’d looked bad enough that Eponine had taken one glance at him from her first floor window, let out a long, low, whistle, and just thrown him the spare keys.

“It’s not that I don’t want to tell you,” Grantaire says, forlornly. “It’s just not my thing to tell.”

Enjolras had barely wanted Combeferre to know he’d been bitten, let alone anyone else. Despite Courfeyrac’s texts, Grantaire isn’t saying a word to anyone until Enjolras has explicitly said it’s okay. That’s not why he’s here, not why he’s taking up gangling, self-pitying space on Eponine’s couch this early in the morning.

“But you still _like_ him?” Eponine presses.

“Hey, I never said I liked him any more than I like anyone else.”

Eponine raises one eyebrow at him, very slowly. This, of course, is why Grantaire is here. He does like Enjolras, likes him so deeply he can’t quite find it in himself to try and stop. He’s not stupid, he knows people can’t love another person without ever knowing them properly, without ever seeing them at their worst in the mornings or at their most viciously vulnerable. He knows love needs to encompass the small, overlookable things that add up to the sum of a person, like how they like their coffee or how many pillows they sleep with, what song keeps them going or what they do when they can’t sleep. He knows that and he _knows_ he’s missing most of that information about Enjolras.

He also knows he can’t lay claim any to feeling anything stronger for Enjolras than _like_ , than high regard and higher aesthetic interest, but here’s the thing: he wants the chance to try. Whether Enjolras was bitten or not, Grantaire just wants to try.

“Oh my god,” Grantaire says. “Shut up. I hate it when you’re right. Stop being right at once.”

“I can’t,” Eponine says. She sounds a little too smug for Grantaire’s liking. “It’s my curse.” 

“You keep telling yourself that.” It’s Cosette, padding through from the kitchen in a thick dressing gown and precariously carrying three mugs of coffee in her hands. She passes one to Grantaire, who takes it with no small gratitude. 

The mug has a picture of a moose on it. Grantaire looks up at Eponine, who just shrugs. 

Cosette drops a kiss onto Eponine’s shoulder as she passes. “What’s happened now?”

“Enjolras is staying with Grantaire,” Eponine tells her, taking another mug. This one has three owls on it. “In his tiny flat. Indefinitely." She pauses, and then adds, incredibly heavy on the sarcasm: "As _friends_.”

It doesn’t sound like any better an idea the more times Grantaire hears someone say it. “Only at night!” he protests, weakly, but judging by the look on Eponine’s face this does not help.

“Okay,” Cosette says, slowly. She sinks down onto the couch on Grantaire’s other side. “And we’re sure this is a good idea?”

“I’m sure it’ll be fine,” Grantaire says quickly, curling his hands a little desperately around his mug. “I’m just living with Enjolras in a one room flat for a while. It’s for a good cause. I’m sure it’s going to be fine.” His sentences have got shorter and shorter, the way they always do when he’s trying to convince himself, like if he stops talking soon enough then he won’t notice he’s talking utter bullshit. “It’s going to be fine, right?” he says, again. “Right?”

Eponine looks him straight in the eyes. “You, my friend, are fucked.”

Grantaire drops his head against the back of the couch. “Don’t I know it,” he mutters, and closes his eyes.

He spends as much of the morning as he can feasibly string out camped on Eponine’s couch like that, Cosette settled down on one side of him and Eponine on the other. They watch imported Saturday morning kids’ TV more than a little nostalgically and Grantaire drinks every cup of coffee Cosette kindly puts into his hands. Marius is a late riser despite what his dewy-fresh face might suggest and eventually emerges, rumpled and confused and draped in a comforter, sometime around the second showing of Peppa Pig. There’s not really enough room on the couch for four but they make it work somehow, all of them huddling under the one blanket.

Grantaire loves his flat, his few cubic feet all to his own, but Eponine’s, with all its clutter and clash of decorative choices, always makes him feel at home.

When the cartoons start giving way to TV for older kids, Grantaire stretches as best he can on the crowded couch and decides he’d probably better head home. 

Out of the blue, Eponine kisses him on the cheek at the door and he stares at her, a little surprised. 

She shrugs. “Just - look after yourself, okay?”

Grantaire nods. “I’ll do my best,” he says, and hopes he means it.

//

_sent and received while Grantaire is fretting and hoping it doesn’t show to the regular people he’s walking past on his way home:_

**grantaire**  
we’re okay right?

**grantaire**  
after this morning?

**grantaire**  
combeferre?

**combeferre**  
You took care of him, R. Of course we’re okay.

**grantaire**  
shut up you’re a sentimental embarrassment

**grantaire**  
(thank you)

//

Grantaire doesn’t know what to expect that evening. He tidies a little, just in case, pulls the quilt over his futon and throws out the rubbish from his coffee table. He makes sure there are pillows on the couch. Also, on a hot, passive aggressive whim, he pushes his recycling bin into the cupboard under the sink, out of view.

Even after that, though, Grantaire is almost surprised when there’s a knock at the door just before the sun goes down, the horizon still a bloody watercolour behind the Parisian skyline.

Grantaire answers with no small sense of deja-vu. Enjolras is at his threshold, shadow-eyed like he hasn’t slept. He’s wearing his red jacket like a coat of arms, a declaration of self and team. Grantaire is wearing a threadbare green tee-shirt and a pair of faded jeans. He does not suit red, never has, but Enjolras makes him wish he did.

God but it’s going to be a long night if Grantaire keeps thinking like that. Enough, he thinks. Enough.

“You can come in,” he says.

“You only need to ask me the first time,” Enjolras says, but he hadn’t moved until Grantaire asked. He steps inside like he’s unsure of his welcome. Grantaire doesn’t know what to do with that.

He locks the door as a precaution and when he turns back to the room, Enjolras is watching him, arms folded across his chest. “What?”

“Are you sure about this?”

“Well,” Grantaire says, “you didn’t drink me down like a slurpee last night and you were so new to the whole bloodlust thing that you might as well have been wearing a sign, so I think I’m good.”

“Like a - never mind.” Enjolras turns away, running an impatient hand through his hair. “I’m glad to see you’re taking this so seriously.”

“What would you rather?” Grantaire asks. He follows Enjolras across the room to the couch. “Would you rather I cowered in the corner and waited for you to turn? Is that what you want?”

“Of course not,” Enjolras says. There’s no fire in his voice. He just sounds tired, which is not what Grantaire wants. He wants Enjolras safe here, guarded from the parts of himself he isn’t admitting he fears. Grantaire knows all too well what it’s like to feel like you’re not within your own control and he doesn’t want to see Enjolras like that, cowed by his own unsought needs.

Grantaire reaches out to Enjolras before he can stop himself. “Hey,” he says. “Enjolras. If you don’t want to be here, you don’t have to stay. Just - “ he makes himself take a breath. Enjolras hasn’t looked away from Grantaire’s hand resting on his arm, Grantaire’s paint-stained fingers against his own pale skin. Grantaire thinks carefully and then says, “Keep yourself safe.”

It would never have worked on Grantaire, _has_ never worked on Grantaire, only fuelled the relentless, reckless core of him that pushed him on and on, to the next bottle, the next round. Grantaire boxes now, the only rounds he goes come with gloves and referees, but it pushes him still, _keep yourself safe_. Enjolras though, Enjolras has a backbone as upright as his tightly cultivated principles, finds guilt an extinguisher not a match. He gives in to Grantaire’s request almost visibly, like the cracking of ice.

“All right,” Enjolras says. He moves away from Grantaire like peeling away a plaster, sharp and all at once. “I’ll stay.”

“Well, don’t do me any favours,” Grantaire says, easy and snide, like they’re used to, and Enjolras’s smile is a gratitude of all its own.

They wait, together, as dusk starts to fall in earnest. Grantaire doesn’t have a television but he has a sketchbook and Enjolras has brought a tablet and they sit in silence, side by side on Grantaire’s hard-used couch as the light behind the blinds slowly darkens. Grantaire doesn’t mention how Enjolras tenses as the light dips down and down and Enjolras doesn’t mention the way Grantaire keeps shooting him looks like he just can’t keep his eyes away. 

Grantaire doesn’t ask what Enjolras is reading and Enjolras doesn’t ask what he’s drawing and the time passes. It’s companionable in a way that seems almost alien for them, a pocket of domestic friendship so far removed from their usual open flame interactions that Grantaire didn’t even let himself consider it at his darkest, his drunkest. Sober, it’s almost more than Grantaire can bear, this simple, sweet moment they have raised up between them, held together by the fading light of the sun.

It doesn’t last, of course. 

Grantaire sees the exact moment the sun goes down for good, sees it written across Enjolras like a line in ink. Grantaire thinks Enjolras would have staggered under the weight of the change, were he another man and given to personal vulnerabilities. Enjolras can and does blaze raw and open when he’s given cause on behalf of another but ask him about his own desires and it’s like dropping a portcullis, just as sudden, just as iron, just as unbreachable.

“You okay?” Grantaire asks. “I mean, you know. For a given value.”

Enjolras nods, his face set like he doesn’t trust himself to speak. He’s laced his hands tightly together in his lap like a supplicant. His skin is stretched taut and white over his knuckles.

Grantaire looks over his shoulder. The door is still locked.

“Right then,” he says, striving to sound casual. “Let me know if you need anything. There are books… somewhere, if you want.”

Enjolras nods again. “Thank you,” he says, hoarse-voiced. “I’m sure I’ll be fine,” and Grantaire retreats to his easel before he can say anything else he’ll regret.

//

Because Grantaire is a glutton for punishment, his easel is set up facing the couch. A quick glance to the side and he can see Enjolras, long legged and stretched across the couch that Grantaire has eaten on, slept on, fucked on. Enjolras has his eyes closed and his head tipped back like he’s sleeping but if he were a painting, he would be all smooth, tense lines, too tightly strung for proper repose. Grantaire finds his gaze drawn again and again to the long sweep of Enjolras’s bare neck as though he were the one with the hunger for blood thundering through his veins and he gives up on holding himself back and just _paints_.

He’s always been able to lose himself like this, lost to the sweep of his brush and the strokes of colour. He could be anywhere, anyone, and it wouldn’t matter when there’s the way paint feels on canvas, the way it stains his hands like a bruise where he’s careless with his brush. 

Grantaire doesn’t know how much time has passed when a sudden sound makes him look up, jolted out of his work. Enjolras’s tablet is lying forgotten on his lap and if Grantaire thought he had looked strained earlier, this evening, last night, it’s nothing to the way Enjolras is holding himself now, as rigid as a man on a crumbling parapet. His jaw is clenched so tightly Grantaire can see the muscle twitch.

Grantaire drops his paintbrush.

“You _idiot_ ,” he says. He wants nothing more than to rush over, put his hands on Enjolras and check for fever, the flush of temperature that comes with the denied need of blood. “Haven’t you had anything to drink?”

Enjolras does flush then, an angry, embarrassed red. “Of course,” he says. “Just - not blood.” He says the word like he’s admitting a failing, like a biological requirement for sustenance is a weakness he can’t bear to show light.

“ _God_.” Grantaire can hardly take it in. “I knew you’d be stubborn but this -” he forces himself to take a breath, Enjolras looking mutinously across the room at him. “How can you do this to yourself?” he says. “How can you insist day after day that the bitten have just as many rights as the non bitten and then act like a second class citizen the second teeth touch your skin? That’s a hypocrisy I didn’t expect from you.”

“I’m not a hypocrite,” Enjolras says, his hackles clearly rising. “Sue me if the idea of drinking someone else’s blood is a little hard to come to terms with.”

Grantaire thinks, violent and unfair, _you didn’t seem to mind last night_ , but even he has the sense not to say it. His face must give something away, though, because Enjolras bares his teeth like a cornered dog.

“That was different, and you know it,” he snarls. There’s more of the animalistic in the way Enjolras’s face twists than Grantaire is really comfortable with in this small room and it should scare him but instead it just makes him _angry_.

“You need blood, Enjolras!” Grantaire lets his voice rise, tearing an exasperated hand through his hair. “You can’t just pretend you don’t. You can feel it. I can see it! You need to _feed_.”

Enjolras flinches back against the couch cushions as the word hangs, ugly and uncomfortable, between them. They’ve neither of them said anything as blunt about Enjolras being bitten yet but Grantaire doesn’t pause, just starts pacing the length of the room, calculating his options.

“I should have thought of this,” he says, “I should have been more prepared. You should have been more prepared.”

“ _I_ should have been more prepared?” Enjolras repeats, watching Grantaire’s every move, but Grantaire just talks over him. It’s easy, most of the time, to fall into a proper two-sided argument with Enjolras but this is about Enjolras’s own stupid safety, his own stupid life, and Enjolras is refusing to accept the responsibility he so readily takes on for when anyone else is concerned.

“I should have had something ready,” Grantaire says, trying to bite back all his anger. “What an _idiot_ , not to think of it when it’s so obvious. What was Combeferre thinking, not getting you anything? What were either of you thinking?” He’s back at the couch now and Enjolras is looking up at him and it tears through Grantaire like a bullet, Enjolras listening from below. 

Nothing is right about this at all.

No matter how many times Grantaire thinks about the problem the same answer presents itself, insistent like the answer from a prayer to a wrathful god. 

Grantaire’s breath shakes when he exhales. “Never mind,” he says, trying to sound calmer than he feels. “Nowhere’s open now and you’re too new to this to trust yourself outside and - god, _here_.”

Swift and brutal, Grantaire yanks the collar of his tee-shirt aside. Enjolras looks at Grantaire’s exposed skin like he’s seeing the surface of the ocean after too long under the waves, like he’d been drowning and Grantaire has offered him a rope.

“What are you doing?” Enjolras asks, his voice suddenly hoarse.

“What does it look like?” Grantaire says, rolling his eyes. He grins as wickedly as he can manage under the circumstances. “Offering you a snack.”

Enjolras recoils as violently as if Grantaire had struck him. “Don’t joke about that, Grantaire.”

“Who said I’m joking?” Grantaire says. He sinks down onto the far end of the couch from Enjolras, holding his free hand up in placation. “I mean it.”

“You can’t,” Enjolras insists. “How can you mean something like that? You don’t know what you’re offering.”

“Oh, I don’t know what I’m offering, do I?” Grantaire snorts. “I know you don’t think I take much in at meetings but do you think I’ve just slept through every single thing Les Amis has ever had to say? Trust me, Enjolras, I know what I’m getting myself into.”

It’s unsettling, like missing a step on a familiar staircase, seeing Enjolras like this. He isn’t even arguing properly, reduced to short, clipped sentences and obvious refutations. It’s like the hunger in him is stronger than his spirit, like it’s a weight on his oratory, his beliefs and his retaliations, bearing him down and down until all he has are these weak protests and nothing to help him take his eyes off Grantaire’s bare, offered throat.

Grantaire would give Enjolras anything to get him back the way he wants to be. A little blood is nothing he hasn’t lost before and for much less worthy reasons.

“I’ll turn you,” Enjolras says. He’s pressed so far back against the couch that there’s no room for him to go but he tenses his shoulders like he’s going to try anyway, anything to get space between him and Grantaire.

“You won’t,” Grantaire repeats. “I have to drink from you for that so that’s easily avoidable.” He doesn’t think about it as he says it, doesn’t think what that means for Enjolras, freshly bitten and freshly turned, Enjolras who turned up at Grantaire’s door with blood on his mouth from someone else’s veins, Enjolras who had to have chosen to drink in return or the bite would have killed him where he stood.

But there’ll be time for them to talk about that later, Grantaire hopes, and pulls at his tee-shirt again. He watches Enjolras’s eyes focus on the rapid pulse in his neck like he can see the pump of blood through the skin, kept away from him by just one easily broken layer of skin. Grantaire wonders, idly, if Enjolras’s throat is burning the way his own used to do when he went too long without his own kind of drink.

Enjolras swallows visibly. Grantaire can see him considering it, weighing the steady, rising need Grantaire is achingly familiar with against his inbuilt, unignorable objections. “I’ll kill you,” Enjolras finally whispers. 

“You won’t,” Grantaire says, as simply as that. “I trust you.”

There’s a long, long pause. Grantaire could swear he could hear his own heartbeat sounding out as loud as a call to arms in the silent room.

“Do it,” he says, when Enjolras still hasn’t moved. “You can do it, it’s all right.”

“Don’t,” Enjolras says, clenching his fists. “What if I can’t -” his mouth twists, disgusted at himself. “I won’t be able to stop.”

“You will,” Grantaire says, forcing his confidence into his voice. “I trust you.”

Enjolras makes a noise like he’s been wounded. “Grantaire,” he says, like the name has been torn out of his mouth. “Please, you can’t be sure. I can’t.”

“I’m saying yes,” Grantaire says. “I am saying yes, you can.”

He holds Enjolras’s gaze as steadily as he can manage. Enjolras stares back, white-faced, but he must see Grantaire’s determination because his eyes turn dark, dark like he’s looking at prey. This is it, Grantaire thinks, he’s going to, he wants to.

Slowly, horror movie slowly, Enjolras bares his long, newly inhuman teeth. Grantaire takes a quick, hard breath, so deep it hurts his chest.

“Good,” Grantaire hisses, his heart pounding battle-fast. “Do it. I want you to do it _now_.”

“Grantaire,” Enjolras breathes again, sounding for all the world like a man at prayer, and bites.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warnings: repeated discussion of blood/bite wounds as per vampire story tradition. Discussion of past alcohol abuse, the feelings of addiction, and recovery. If I've missed anything to warn for, please just let me know and I'll always add it to the list! 
> 
> As always, you can also find me shrieking into the void on [tumblr](http://mooging62.tumblr.com)!


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One million hundred bazillion thanks to laliandra, who essentially dragged this out of me with embalming hooks. <3

“So,” Enjolras says, “I’ve been bitten.”

There is a long pause in which no one says anything and then, as one, like predators tracking a fawn, everyone turns to Grantaire.

“What?” he yelps. “It’s not like _I_ bit him!”

“It’s true,” Enjolras says. “He didn’t.”

Everyone turns back to Enjolras. The Musain looks more suited to law courts than tennis, all dark wood walls and mismatched chairs, but their friends look between like Enjolras and Grantaire like they’re following a volley. 

They’ve all gathered in the Cafe Musain at Enjolras’s call, like every other meeting they’ve had this year. Unlike every other meeting, Grantaire had been there from the start, first through the door with Combeferre and Enjolras in tow.

There’s a scarf wound around Enjolras’s neck. It’s one of those ones that would look like the highest level of trash hipster on basically anyone else but Enjolras manages to wear like haute-couture. Grantaire has paint on his hands and a coffee stain on his jumper, a rip in the knee of his jeans, and his own scarf now feels like a blazing signal for everyone to see: _I’ve been bitten too_.

Grantaire had stopped drinking after he woke up with a knife by his bed and no recollection of what he intended to do with it. Last night, there had been something of that moment in Enjolras’s face as he had drawn back from Grantaire’s throat, bloody-mouthed.

The bite had _hurt_ more than Grantaire had thought it would, a slow pulse of pain in the crook of his neck counting out all the long seconds in which neither of them said anything, and Grantaire kept bleeding, and Enjolras kept staring at him like he was all Enjolras’s sins come home to roost.

Now, in the safe daylight of the crowded Musain meeting room as Grantaire shivers with memory, it’s Bahorel that speaks first.

“So you’re not kidding?” he says. “You’re actually - you’ve actually been bitten?”

Enjolras nods. “Yes,” he says, and draws his scarf to one side. He doesn’t hesitate. “Bitten and turned.”

The bite is still there, ragged and angry-looking, not yet faded to its scar. Grantaire’s own neck throbs as if in sympathy, though his own bite is smaller, more careful. His was not a bite with intent to turn or kill but instead a gentler thing. Enjolras had been bitten in an alley by the wind-chilled mouth of a stranger; Grantaire had been bitten by one of his own, in his own home, with the press of Enjolras’s mouth warm against his skin.

Grantaire has to stop thinking about it. He especially has to stop thinking about it here, for god and everyone to see. 

But no one is turning back to him yet. Everyone’s attention is caught and held on the mark on Enjolras’s pale throat. 

Everyone’s attention, that is, except Combeferre, who is gazing implacably around at the rest of them. All of Les Amis belong to each other, they’re very clear about that, but Combeferre is Enjolras’s above all else. His expression is mild but then the stillest waters can have the most vicious currents.

Enjolras clears his throat, letting his scarf fall back into place. “Does anyone have any questions?”

There’s a pause, the kind that feels like someone holding their breath, like the tensing of a lion’s muscles before they pounce on some unsuspecting fawn, and then Courfeyrac bursts out, “Oh my god, _do I_ ,” and the room erupts into noise.

Joly, like the fastidious medical student he is, asks, over the hubbub, “Have you had blood since?”

Enjolras says, shortly, “Yes,” in a tone that invites no further comment.

Combeferre is frowning though, which is surprising. Grantare would think he disapproved if Combeferre wasn’t _Combeferre_ , fierce and stalwart by Enjolras’s side. He would have offered his own blood sooner than see Enjolras go without something he needed, Grantaire knows, so the doubt tugging creases on his forehead must be for another reason entirely and Grantaire doesn’t have the mental reserves to puzzle that one out now.

Joly nods, not an ounce of judgement in his face. “Good,” he says. “You’ll feel better for it. You know the first week will be the hardest.”

Enjolras nods in return. “I know,” he says. “I’m taking precautions but I’m open to further suggestions, if anyone has them.”

Jehan, who had spent a long, long summer draped over every item of furniture in Grantaire’s flat in turn bemoaning his inability to woo Courfeyrac the way he wanted to, is now draped over Courfeyrac. “Can we do anything to help?” he asks.

Courfeyrac and Jehan have the kind of relationship that looks easy, Courfeyrac dropping kisses onto Jehan’s knuckles in conversational lulls, Jehan’s arm resting tender and possessive around Courfeyrac’s shoulders. Even Enjolras’s face softens when he watches them together for any length of time and today is no exception. 

“I’ll let you know,” Enjolras says. He dips his head in gratitude. “And thank you.”

Courfeyrac asks, “Are you okay for blood?”, taking the liberty that only Enjolras’s closest could. 

“I’m no danger in the daylight,” Enjolras says, cutting off whatever Courfeyrac was about to say, “or you know I would never be here with you all.”

Courfeyrac interrupts then, his grip on Jehan’s hand tightening just enough to be noticeable. “That’s not what I meant and you know it,” he says, more heatedly than Grantaire has heard easy-going Courfeyrac sound in a while. “Fuck’s sake, fearless leader,” he adds, though he’s smiling now, lightening his words, “think about yourself once in a while, maybe.”

“I will take your opinion under advisement,” Enjolras says, faux-gravely to match, and Courfeyrac grins back at him from around Jehan’s shoulder.

“As you should,” he says. “We all know Joly’s right and the first week’s the hardest but we also know there are ways to make it less shit. What are you considering?”

Enjolras shifts in his chair like he’s been waiting for this moment. He looks every inch the fearless leader they all call him in jest, his back straightening and his mouth firm. He’s going to talk _strategy_ , Grantaire realizes, and has to look away. He can’t watch Enjolras talk about himself like he’s nothing more than an ordinary cause.

Despite the subject matter, there’s a question no one is asking though Grantaire at least has been thinking it from the moment Enjolras arrived at his door that night. Anyone can be bitten and heal again, move on from it after a few days of feeling grim and under the weather, like an allergic reaction. To turn, to become one of the bitten, you have to bite the vampire back. It’s a decision, a conscious deliberate choice, and one that Enjolras apparently made.

Grantaire stares around at his friends, watching for the slightest indication that they might ask it, might pan for gold that Enjolras is keeping buried, but none of them give even a flicker of inclination. They’re all following Enjolras’s answer, careful and interested, but there’s no ill-regard in any of their open, concerned faces and Grantaire almost hurts with relief. 

Not everyone is looking at Enjolras though. When Grantaire turns in his chair, Jehan is looking straight back at him. Courfeyrac, predictably, is turned entirely towards Enjolras and Combeferre at the front of the room and isn’t paying either Jehan or Grantaire any attention at all.

So, Grantaire raises his eyebrows: _what?_

Jehan gestures at his own neck, currently festooned with a ribbon that Grantaire could swear came from Christmas wrapping paper, and mouths, _nice scarf_.

Quickly, Grantaire shakes his head, _Don’t_ and, when Jehan just looks confused, he presses his hands together, entreating. _Please_ , he mouths, and Jehan, slowly, nods. His frown says this is not over. Grantaire’s eyebrows are trying to signal that it definitely should be but Jehan is stubbornly refusing to understand.

"R?"

Grantaire tunes back into the main conversation. “Yes?”

“I said,” Combeferre says, patiently, “how do you remember it?”

Grantaire takes a second before he answers, something about the room feeling off now that he’s paying attention again. He looks to Enjolras. Enjolras has turned to him with the rest of the room but there’s the beginnings of a flush colouring his skin, working to red down his neck. Grantaire wants to follow the colour down with his mouth, to peel Enjolras’s scarf aside to bare the bite and leave his own mark on Enjolras’s skin.

“Well?” Enjolras demands. For a hot, guilty second, Grantaire thinks Enjolras knows what he was just thinking but then he goes on. “How _do_ you remember it?”

Grantaire, who hasn’t heard anything that Enjolras may or may not have said while he was preoccupied with Jehan’s sudden laser sharp focus on Grantaire’s sartorial choices, casts about for any hint of what he’s supposed to be describing. The best he gets is an eyebrow raise from Eponine, which is unhelpful at best, and one of Cosette’s sympathetic looks, which is worrying at worst.

“The night Enjolras was turned,” Combeferre says, before Enjolras has to. “What do you remember?”

At his table by the front of the room, Enjolras stares at Combeferre as if wounded. Unless asking someone for their side of a story has become betrayal rather than common practice, Grantaire has definitely missed an exchange he’d much rather have heard before bringing the memory of Enjolras’s bloodied face and shaking hands into the light of the Musain.

What does Grantaire remember of the night Enjolras was turned? He remembers the look on Enjolras’s face when Grantaire had invited him in, like something had been taken from him, had hollowed him out.

He’s not going to hold that out to his friends. It’s not for them to see.

“The same as Enjolras, I suppose,” Grantaire says. Combeferre is studying him as though he were a moth pinned for display, all his secrets laid bare for those who know where to look. There’s a reason he and Enjolras have been friends for so long.

Grantaire continues, when it becomes clear that it is expected. “He was bitten. I was nearest.” He shrugs, tries not to let his mouth twist the rueful way it wants to when he says, “Or at least the nearest acceptable risk.” 

There’s a sharp noise from Enjolras’s direction and when Grantaire turns back to him, Enjolras is on his feet. It’s still daylight outside and he’s had blood not a day ago but the expression on his face makes Grantaire want to turn to check the horizon for the setting sun. Grantaire thinks about all the times people have written about cold fury and wonders if any of them have ever seen someone like this, hard-edged and pale like brittle ice.

“What?” Grantaire says, staying seated. “Isn’t that why you chose my door?”

Enjolras is very still. “No,” he says. Grantaire has heard him rouse mobs with less surety in his voice. He keeps his head high and doesn’t look away from Grantaire when he says, “There’s nothing about you that is an acceptable risk.”

And what is Grantaire supposed to say to that? 

Enjolras puts his hands in his pockets like he’s refusing to let himself duck his head, refusing to look away from Grantaire. His cheeks pink, just enough that Grantaire can see it in the cafe’s careful lighting. “At least,” Enjolras continues, “you’re not an acceptable risk to me.”

Grantaire stares. That first night, when Enjolras had shaken in Combeferre’s arms, he had insisted that Grantaire was one of them, had counted Grantaire among his friends, but there feels like a world of difference between that moment and this. 

Neither of them looks away from the other for a long, long moment. Enjolras’s mouth is a tight line, like he’s holding something back. Grantaire wants to shake it out of him. He wants to kiss it out of him. He wants - 

“Hello,” says Courfeyrac, pointedly, “and welcome to _We’re Still Here_ , starring me and everyone else you know!”

The atmosphere breaks. Everyone shifts in their seats like they’ve just remembered to take a breath. Grantaire can empathize. He swallows. His grip on the edge of the table has turned white-knuckled.

Enjolras looks away from him with visible effort. “May I have a word?” he asks.

“You may have more than one,” Grantaire says. He’s trying to sound loftily facetious just to make their friends roll their eyes but even as they do he follows Enjolras to the door, like a delinquent or a disciple.

//

There’s not a lot of private space in a public cafe, unsurprisingly, but there’s at least no one else in the corridor leading to the bathrooms, tucked away by the rickety stairs to the wine cellar. Grantaire leans on the bannister at the stair top for preemptive support.

Enjolras, Grantaire, and Combeferre had all been at the cafe before everyone else arrived and when the room started to fill, growing noisy and warm with the heartbeats of the people Enjolras loved most in the world, Enjolras had put his back to the furthest wall. Combeferre had run interference as subtly as he was capable of and Grantaire, trying not to draw anyone’s attention, had stayed by Enjolras’s side. It wasn’t as if anyone would think anything of it: he’d been obvious enough about his feelings in the past.

When Enjolras had been obviously holding his breath, Grantaire had reached out and touched his wrist, the strip of skin between his watchband and the cuff of his shirt. It had been instinctive, masochistic, like pressing a still fresh bruise. Enjolras had taken a steady breath in and said, very low, “Thank you.”

Now, in the confines of the Musain corridors, Grantaire looks up just in time to see Enjolras opening his eyes, like he’d needed a second. He does Enjolras the dignity of pretending not to notice.

“Well?” he says, instead. “Which word have you chosen?”

Grantaire can almost see Enjolras calculating what to say, so: “Do not just say _one word_ ,” Grantaire says, before Enjolras can. “You can’t drag me out here and then not explain anything. Or, I mean, I guess you can, technically, but it would be a bit of a dick move.”

The cold edges of Enjolras’ inexplicable anger start to melt into a mulish exasperation. This is much more well-trodden ground.

“Although,” Grantaire starts, chancing the innuendo, but Enjolras says immediately, “Don’t, not now,” and something in his voice stops Grantaire where the situation hasn’t been able.

All right,” he says. He puts his hands in his pocket, an old defensive mechanism to stop himself from reaching for a pencil that isn’t there, sketching to keep his hands busy, his attention away from trouble. “What did you want to say to me?”

Enjolras is not someone who avoids difficult topics of conversation, much as Grantaire might wish he were right now. “You think I came to you because I was the most willing to risk your life?”

“Well,” Grantaire says, wondering if there’s any way he can play this down, “I wouldn’t have put it like that.”

“No,” Enjolras says, “you’d just say you were an _acceptable risk_.” His mouth twists unhappily. Grantaire can’t get a read on him at all. “You think I came to you because I wanted to see you hurt?”

Grantaire honestly hadn’t expected Enjolras to look this upset about the idea. He wouldn’t have said it if he’d thought Enjolras wouldn’t agree. He wasn’t willing to risk pushing anything about that night further than Enjolras was comfortable with, not when the mark on his own neck still throbbed and Enjolras still wore a scarf like a disguise.

“No,” Grantaire says, slowly, trying to pick his words carefully. “I didn’t think you wanted to hurt me. Just - “ he breathes out, suddenly frustrated. “If you _were_ going to hurt someone, you can’t honestly expect me to believe you wouldn’t rather it be me than one of the others.”

“Yes, I _can_.” Enjolras answers immediately, insistent. “God, R.” He takes a breath, runs a hand through his hair. Grantaire can’t remember the last time Enjolras didn’t call him by his full name. 

“What?” Grantaire folds his arms. “Go on, tell me otherwise.”

Enjolras pushes off the wall so quickly that Grantaire almost shrinks away. He doesn’t though, stands his ground even though there aren’t any windows in this part of the Musain, nothing for him to check that the sun is still high in the sky, that Enjolras still can’t turn. It’s not that Grantaire thinks he _would_ but he knows enough about the first week after a bite to know that he might not always have a choice.

Grantaire has seen Enjolras fight himself for control too many times in the last few days. He’s not going to be Enjolras’s collateral damage.

He regrets that almost the moment he’s thought it because Enjolras must see it on his face, backs away again instantly, hands raised. 

“It’s okay,” Grantaire says immediately, before he can help himself. He’s too intimately familiar with the gut-curl of guilt to be able to let it grip someone in front of him. “I know you wouldn’t - that you wouldn’t _mean_ to -”

Neither of them finish his sentence. Enjolras looks faintly sick.

Grantaire can’t bear to let the moment linger, not when Enjolras is looking at him like that. “So,” he says, “lovely as this has been, I can’t help but notice you’ve not actually told me why we’re out here.”

Enjolras starts to say something but Combeferre interrupts, appearing around the corner without any warning. 

“Sorry, sorry,” he says, ducking between the two of them. “Bathroom.”

“Is he checking up on us?”

“Almost definitely,” Enjolras says, but he sounds much fonder than Grantaire might have expected him to. Then again, he and ‘Ferre have always had something more than the rest of them, some weirdo bond probably fuelled by a shared love of fancy coffee and an unhealthy interest in debating correct referencing in essays.

Grantaire read one of Combeferre’s essays once and basically lost his eyesight trying to decipher the introduction. He’s not making that mistake again.

“Does he know?” Grantaire asks, quietly, while Combeferre is out of earshot. “About…” he gestures to his own throat.

“Oh,” says Enjolras. To Grantaire’s surprise, he looks slightly abashed. It’s not a look Grantaire expected to see on Enjolras’s fervent, confident face. “Yes, he does.” 

There’s something in Enjolras’s voice that lets Grantaire know there’s a longer story there, something that Enjolras isn’t sharing, but who is he to demand that Enjolras tell him all his secrets. He’s already trusted Grantaire with his biggest revelation first and that speaks volumes enough for Grantaire to let this one lie.

Combeferre is back in the corridor then, stepping between the two of them again and pausing only when he’s well past them. “Everything going okay?” he asks, lightly enough that if Grantaire didn’t know what a terrifyingly good liar he was, he might not even suspect Combeferre had been worried.

“Yes,” Enjolras says. The way he smiles at Combeferre speaks of hours spent together in the small hours of the morning, companionable friendship. Grantaire _isn’t_ jealous, refuses to be jealous of what he knows is a good and healthy thing for both of them, but, god, it’s still more difficult than he’d like.

Oh, fuck it. This isn’t going away any time soon, he knows, and if Enjolras sees fit to drag him out into corridor confessionals, Grantaire might as well. He’s had Enjolras’s mouth on his skin and Enjolras’s shaking hands in his own and whatever reason Enjolras had for choosing him as the person to clean him up, he still chose him. Grantaire figures he probably owes him this much now.

“I like you, okay?” Grantaire says, all in a rush before he can lose his nerve, the moment Combeferre disappears from sight.

Enjolras turns round, looking startled. Grantaire 

“Well,” he says, slowly. “I’m glad. It would be awkward for everyone else if two of us didn’t get along.” There’s a pause, like he’s expecting Grantaire to interrupt, but Grantaire stays silent and Enjolras continues, sounding more confused, “And I like you too, obviously. We’re friends. Friends like each other.”

Grantaire rolls his eyes this time. He’s not a saint, he’s got limits. “No,” he says, willing himself not to blush. “I _like_ you.” When Enjolras still doesn’t seem to get his hint, Grantaire gives up and just goes for it. “I mean I’m into you, you enormous halfwit. How else do you need me to say it? In semaphore?” 

“That won’t be necessary,” Enjolras tells him, and then doesn’t say anything else. Grantaire still has no way to tell what he’s thinking. He can think of ways this conversation could be going more awry, but not many.

“Just to be clear,” Grantaire says, into the silence, “I’m not trying to ask you out or proposition you or anything like that. I just wanted you to know. Otherwise, it would have felt,” he casts about for the word he wants for a moment, circling his hand between them like this is going to help explain. Finally, he settles on: “Dishonest.”

“Okay,” Enjolras eventually says. “Thank you?”

Grantaire laughs, a shorter, sharper thing than he expected. “You’re welcome.”

“I didn’t mean it like that,” Enjolras says, frowning. “I meant, thank you for telling me. That was - “ he breaks off. Uncharacteristically, he seems like he’s struggling for words. Grantaire waits him out, unrelenting. Eventually, Enjolras offers, “That was very brave of you to say.”

Grantaire bristles and looks away. “Yes, well, thank you for that patronising pearl of wisdom. Will there be anything else or can I go?”

“I’d rather you didn’t,” Enjolras says and when has Grantaire even been able to refuse even the slightest hint of vulnerability from him? 

He stays.

“You’re going to have to say something good now,” Grantaire says. “Just so you know. Otherwise it’s bound to be awkward. That’s just good conversational sense.”

“Since when have you been a proponent of conversational wisdom?” Enjolras asks, a smile tugging at his mouth. 

“Oh, for ages,” Grantaire tells him. “You’ve just been too busy arguing with me to notice.”

“I’ve been too busy arguing with you?” Enjolras is smiling properly now. Grantaire has that excuse for looking at his mouth, at least. “Is that what you’re going with?”

“Of course it is,” Grantaire says. “It’s the truth.”

“The truth,” Enjolras replies. “Isn’t the truth subjective?”

“Apparently so,” Grantaire says. “Seeing as you apparently have a very different way of remembering things to me.”

He almost regrets saying it when Enjolras sobers at once but he can’t quite bring himself to want to take it back, not when Enjolras allows himself to lean back against the wall behind him, a visible seeking of support. Grantaire has seen more of Enjolras the man in the last few days than he has in the whole time he’s known him, he realizes. Both of them have been so wrapped up in their roles as leader and cynic that they’ve never ventured forth into conjecturing how they might actually interact.

“My favourite colour is red,” Enjolras says.

“What?” Grantaire says, slowly. It’s such a non-sequitur that he’s not even being sarcastic, just genuinely thrown. “What does that have to do with anything? Am I supposed to divine some higher meaning from that? Red, the colour of…” he pauses to try to think of literally anything that is red. All he’s coming up with right now is _blood_ , and he’s pretty sure that’s going to be unhelpful.

Enjolras looks disproportionately irritated for someone who’s started talking complete fucking nonsense in the middle of an already confusing situation. “I’m telling you something about myself,” he says, in the tones of someone explaining something to a wilfully misunderstanding audience. 

“Okay,” Grantaire says. It can’t hurt to humour him. “And why is that?”

“Because,” Enjolras says, “you said you liked me.”

Grantaire doesn’t dignify that with a reply.

“And,” Enjolras continues, sounding impatient now, “I thought you should know something about me. Something you didn’t already know.”

Grantaire is having more difficulty following Enjolras’s logic than normal. “Why?”

There’s a particular set to Enjolras’s jaw that reminds Grantaire that this man has faced down the press and the police on more than one occasion and has never come away from either confrontation diminished. “I already thought we were friends,” Enjolras says, “and it occurred to me that maybe you didn’t think the same.”

“So you told me your favourite colour?”

Enjolras shrugs. “Friends know things about each other,” he says. “I wanted you to feel like you knew something about me too.”

Grantaire thankfully has enough self-preservational instinct not to just blurt out _well, I know you’re a vampire_ but it’s a near thing. 

He screws up his nerve instead, and says: “I’d like it if we were friends.” He hesitates. “Properly friends. Which is why I mentioned this in the first place. I didn’t want you to think I was letting you, you know - “ he waves a hand at his throat to suggest _drink my blood_ without him actually having to say it and have this whole corridor confessional moment turn into any more of a badly-lit movie scene than it already is, “ _you know_ ,” he repeats, “just because I want into your jeans.”

“But you do want that?” Enjolras 

Well, he’s come this far, Grantaire thinks, and though he knows he’s turning red, he says, clearly, “Yes.”

“Oh,” says Enjolras, and to Grantaire’s enormous surprise, he looks a little pink-cheeked too. 

“Indeed,” Grantaire says. “Oh.”

They stand in silence for a moment, which is abruptly a moment too long for Grantaire to take.

“Okay, well,” he says, pushing himself away from the staircase bannister. “This has been sufficiently mortifying so I’m just going to - “ he jerks his head in the direction of the cafe and starts to head that way.

Before he takes more than a few steps, though, Enjolras calls, “Wait.”

Grantaire stops, and turns slowly back.

“You didn’t let me finish,” Enjolras says. The colour still high in his cheeks is a faint echo of how he flushed when Grantaire had said, _I was the most acceptable risk_. “I didn’t tell you why I came to you that night.”

Grantaire doesn’t trust himself to answer so he just stays silent. Enjolras takes a step toward him.

“I came to you,” Enjolras says, more quietly than anything he’s said up till now, “because I wanted to feel safe.”

//

“And then what happened?!” Eponine doesn’t shriek it, but it’s not far off. Cosette pats her soothingly on the shoulder.

“And then,” Grantaire mumbles, face down on their kitchen counter, “I said _oh_ and he said _yes_ and then we both went back inside.”

Eponine makes a horrified noise. “I am never leaving you both alone again,” she says. “I always knew you were an emotional liability but I thought Enjolras was at least stubborn enough not to leave a conversation unfinished.”

“Apparently we’ve found the exception to the rule,” Grantaire informs his empty juice glass. “Aren’t I lucky. I’ve out-stubborned him.”

“Yes, we’re all very proud,” Eponine says. “You’ve obviously got everything you wanted out of that conversation and none of us have any further questions.”

She’s so obviously being sarcastic that Grantaire considers not deigning to answer but the moment stretches, and he’s thinking about it, about Enjolras saying _I wanted to feel safe_ , and he cracks.

“But what does that even _mean_?” he protests, for at least the tenth time. “He wanted to feel _safe_? Did he just not feel safe outside? Was I nearest?”

Eponine sighs. “I still don’t know,” she says. “Inexplicably, I haven’t divined the answer since you last asked me ten minutes ago.”

Grantaire makes a tragic noise. “But why? I thought you loved me.”

“I do,” Eponine says. “But this one’s on you. Sorry, R. You’re going to have to make him use his feelings words.”

Grantaire moans.

Cosette scoots her stool closer towards him. “Okay,” she says, practically. “What are you going to do now?”

“Well,” Grantaire says, “my plan was to run away and join a circus and maybe change my name.”

“So a very sensible one, then.”

“Obviously,” Grantaire says. “Sensible is my middle name.”

Eponine puts her hand on his shoulder. “R,” she says. “I know what your middle name is.”

“I don’t,” Cosette points out, and Eponine twists to grin wickedly at her. 

“I’ll tell you,” she promises.

Grantaire sits bolt upright. “You’ll do no such thing!”

“Then come up with a better plan,” Eponine tells him, uncompromising. “Joining the circus wouldn’t work out anyway. You’d just set yourself on fire somehow.”

“I’m not Bossuet,” Grantaire grumbles, but she does have a point. Even now, there are scars on his hands from when he slipped while he was working with cardboard a few summers ago and his knuckles are almost permanently faintly bruised from his boxing classes. He probably shouldn’t add fire to the mix. He probably shouldn’t dress as a clown either but that’s for very different reasons.

“And clowns are terrifying,” Marius chimes in, as if on cue. “Don’t join the circus, R.”

All three of them turn to stare at him. Marius flushes pink under all his pretty freckles. He looks like an embarrassed rabbit. Grantaire is so fond of his friends.

“What?” Marius protests. “None of you like clowns!”

“That’s true,” Cosette agrees.

Grantaire needs a better support group. This one seems too easily distracted from his clear and present problems by the thought of hypothetical clowns. “You’re supposed to be _helping_ ,” he says, again.

His phone buzzes in his pocket and when he fishes it out, the message is from Enjolras:

_I think maybe I didn’t explain myself properly earlier_ , is all it says. 

Grantaire stares at it until his eyes blur. This is productive, he tells himself. He’s visualising the outcome of his reply. This is healthy and useful.

Marius comes to stand behind him and Grantaire nearly jumps out of his skin trying to cover the screen when he says, “It’d probably help if you typed something.” 

“Thank you,” Grantaire tells him, straight-faced, and Marius returns, equally as blandly, “You’re welcome.”

Marius may look like a startled deer ninety-nine percent of the time and he does have the voice of some kind of cherubim innocent so it’s easy to forget that he’s friends with them all for a reason.

But then again, Marius is _Marius_ , and so it’s a not a surprise when he puts a hand on Grantaire’s shoulder and says, diplomatically, “What is it you’re worried about?”

Grantaire, eloquently, shrugs.

“Okay,” Marius tries, “do you still think that Enjolras doesn’t like you back?”

If Grantaire had a pillow to hand right now, he would hit Marius with it. “I’m not six years old,” he protests. “I’m not worried about that.”

Eponine makes a skeptical noise but Grantaire just rises above it. “I mean,” he says, “he said he thought we were already friends, so, that’s good, right?”

Cosette comes over to his side of the counter. “It is,” she tells him, placidly. “You know he’d do anything for his friends.”

That’s just the thing, though: they’ve been _friends_ since they’ve known each other. They laugh at the same jokes, love the same people, get under each other’s skin in ways only people who mean something to each other can. What Grantaire wants, what he keeps trying to push back down, is definitely more than friends.

It’s true he isn’t tragically pining after Enjolras or anything but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t _want_.

Eponine is looking at Grantaire a little too shrewdly for his liking. “Or,” she says, in the tone of voice that has literally never meant anything good for Grantaire, “is it that you don’t think he wants into your stupid jeans?”

“Hey,” Grantaire says, “there’s nothing wrong with my jeans.”

Eponine rolls her eyes. “Sure,” she says, “that was my take away point. I was mocking your clothes and not the fact that everyone with eyes knows that Enjolras is into you.”

It takes longer than it probably should for those words to arrange themselves in an order that actually makes logical sense to Grantaire, primarily because it’s just not what he was expecting to hear. “What?”

Marius nods. “It’s true, R. We all know.”

“If you all know, why have you never told me?” Grantaire manages. “Did you think I knew? Because I really, really didn’t.”

The thought is still sort of ebbing around him, not quite meeting land. Enjolras wants him back? If it’s obvious enough that Marius, who is not the most subtly attuned to unresolved sexual tension and had somehow missed Jehan and Courfeyrac’s months long epic flirt-off, has Grantaire just been missing what Enjolras had wanted this whole time? Could he even have managed that? With all the time they’ve spent together, wouldn’t he have noticed?

But then, he thinks, Enjolras hadn’t noticed how Grantaire felt and Grantaire had felt like he was unpreventably projecting his crush to the high heavens, every argument that lasted too long and every glance that should have been shorter.

Before Grantaire can take that thought any further, his phone buzzes again.

_I was scared_ , Enjolras has sent, sending Grantaire’s heart plummeting. _I wanted to feel safe_

Grantaire can’t think too much about that, about Enjolras bleeding from the neck and tasting blood in his mouth, turned and alone in the cold night streets of Paris. Neither really can he think about what happened next: scared and bitten, Enjolras had _wanted Grantaire_.

If anyone notices the tremor to Grantaire’s hands when he types back, they don’t mention it. 

_But you didnt go home to combeferre_ , he sends.

_No_ , is Enjolras’s immediate reply. _I didn’t_.

Eponine is staring at him when he looks up. “Well?” she demands.

“None of your business,” Grantaire says. 

“I think we left _none of my business_ behind when you turned up at our door like a tragic puppy,” Eponine says. “Now tell me what he says or I’ll just read it myself.”

Grantaire holds his phone out of her reach. “Don’t you dare!”

“Oh, I’ll dare,” she says, grabbing for the phone, but it buzzes in Grantaire’s hand before she can make contact with it and he makes a series of plaintive noises, straining to keep out of the way of her hands, until she visibly relents, gesturing grandly for him to check the screen.

_Grantaire?_ reads the text and then, as Grantaire is still looking at the screen, another follows:

_I’m trying to be honest_ , it says. _So I’ll be clearer. I feel safe with you._

Grantaire makes a terrible squeaking sound and then immediately jams his phone into his pocket before Eponine, leaping at him, can wrestle it away.

“Get off!” he yelps, but it’s too late: Eponine has already tackled him onto the couch. Cosette piles on next and then Marius and then they’re just a pile of shrieking, wriggling limbs as Grantaire tries to keep his phone away from everyone, Eponine tries to prevent him, and Cosette and Marius are apparently engaged in some terrifying two person tickle fight all tangled up together.

When Grantaire eventually extracts himself, out of breath and grinning like a madman, Eponine has empty hands, Marius has lost to Cosette in spectacular fashion, and Grantaire still has possession of his phone.

_Sorry_ , he types, _tickle fight interrupted._

The reply comes almost instantly, which is almost as terrifying as it is gratifying. _I hope you won._

_Marius lost_ , Grantaire sends back.

_That went without saying._

Grantaire stares at his phone and considers his next move. He reckons that as long as he doesn’t just send some Courfeyrac-style capslock barrage along the lines of _I’M YOUR SAFE PLAAAAAAAAAAAAACE_ then he’s probably going to do okay.

He forces himself to wait until they’ve all stopped giggling and Cosette is starting to wheedle Marius into cooking for them before he texts back, before he can talk himself out of it: 

_Thank you for telling me_ , he writes, because he can’t pass up the opportunity to throw that one back. He hesitates. In his and Combeferre’s flat, Enjolras is sitting with his phone and waiting for Grantaire to match his nerve. If Enjolras is trying to, like, earnest-chicken him, Grantaire is equal to this challenge. 

He means what he’s about to say, after all.

Quickly, before he can lose his nerve, he sends: you _make me feel safe _and then, while his adrenaline is still up: _we should hang out soon. I’d like that, if you would?___

_I’d like that, Enjolras replies, and Grantaire smiles at his plate the whole way through dinner._

__//_ _

And of course, _of course_ , the night he and Enjolras reach this tentative accord, Grantaire dreams about him. 

He remembers it clearly when he wakes up, carries it with him through his first bleary cup of coffee and into the bathroom, where he goes to brush his teeth and avoid his own reflection, avoid the mark still on his neck like a brand, a stamp of admission. 

In his dream Enjolras was sweat-slick and tangled in his own bed sheets, his head thrown back so Grantaire could see his throat work. He had one hand under the waistband of his pyjamas, his red mouth open and wet, and as his hand moved faster, the unsteady rhythm of someone right on the edge, he had opened his eyes and said, “ _Grantaire_.” 

Grantaire comes sharply at just the memory of it, gasping alone in his shower. 

__//_ _

Enjolras doesn’t do anything by halves. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that Enjolras approaches friendship with the same determination as he does any of his causes but, somehow, Grantaire feels a little blindsided by it. 

The next morning, Enjolras falls into step with Grantaire as he’s on his way to his barista shift. It’s the ass-crack of the day, even the sun seeming to struggle on its way over the horizon, so Grantaire thinks he can be forgiven for almost leaping out of his skin when Enjolras appears by his side. It’s more jarring than he might have expected, seeing Enjolras real by his side when he can still picture him arching up, open-mouthed and desperate, can still feel the way his own heart pounded when Enjolras had told him, _I feel safe with you_. 

“Jesus fuck,” Grantaire yelps, caught entirely off guard. “Warn a man, won’t you?” 

Enjolras looks genuinely contrite. “Sorry,” he says, which might be a first. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”

He’s holding two takeaway cups, Grantaire notices, and as he sees Grantaire look down at them, he holds one out. “Coffee?” 

Grantaire takes it. When he drinks some, it’s black, unsweetened, the way he likes first thing in the morning. He looks down at it in puzzlement. “Since when did you know how I like my coffee?” And, come to that: “And how did you know my way to work?” 

Enjolras shrugs. “I know where you work,” he says, somehow managing to make a completely innocuous statement between friends sound like some kind of threat. Grantaire overlooks it: he doubts it’s something Enjolras even knows he does. “It was easy enough to guess the route you’d take.” 

Grantaire doubts that. It’s a half hour walk between his apartment and the coffee shop. There are plenty of ways to go. 

Enjolras looks like he’s noticed Grantaire’s scepticism but then he’s had a lot of practice. “You don’t like the main roads,” he explains, as though Grantaire doesn’t know. “You prefer the quieter streets in the morning, and - “ he breaks off, and to Grantaire’s great delight, he looks a little embarrassed. He continues anyway, because that’s just who Enjolras is. “And I thought you’d go the most beautiful way.”

Grantaire is momentarily at a loss for words. He covers for it by taking another swig of the coffee. At his side, Enjolras keeps pace with him. 

It’s not like Enjolras was ever graceless but since being turned he’s something else. There’s an ease to the way he moves, the smooth movement born of comparing your own strength to that of your companion and finding it the better. Grantaire wonders whether he had been in too much of a morning stupor to hear Enjolras approach or whether his footsteps fall lighter now, give less of his position away. It would be a tactical advantage. 

The sun is a dim red glow on the horizon but Enjolras seems unfazed by it. There’s no truth to the rumour that vampires can’t go out in sunlight but the week after turning makes someone more vulnerable, the need for blood stronger, the aversion to daylight harder to ignore. 

Grantaire has done more research into the first week of being turned in the last few days than he has in his entire time with Les Amis. Admittedly at first he’d felt a bit like Bella Swan, typing _new vampire problems??_ into Google and scrolling through pages and pages of tumblr memes and Buzzfeed posts until the internet had coughed up something actually useful. Not that that helps him out right now, though. It’s not as if he can put any of his newfound knowledge to use in passing conversation with Enjolras. How would that even go? “Soooo, how’s the blood lust?” Nope. Not an option. 

Apparently he and Enjolras, as ever, have come to entirely the opposite conclusion because just as Grantaire is about to say literally anything else, Enjolras says, “I told Combeferre.” 

It takes Grantaire a second, early as it is and as blindsided as he still feels by this whole encounter, but then he gets it. “About…” He hesitates but then Enjolras is the one that brought this topic up in the first place, so: “About biting me?” 

“I didn’t bite you,” Enjolras says, immediately, and when Grantaire chances a look at him out of the corner of his eye, he’s turned a defensive brick-red. “I mean,” he says, over Grantaire’s instinctive _oh, really?_ , “I did but it wasn’t a bite. I drank from you, that’s all.” 

“That’s all, you say,” Grantaire mutters. 

Enjolras continues undeterred. “Ferre was only pointing out the potential ramifications.” 

Grantaire feels his own shoulders go tense. “You wouldn’t have hurt me,” he insists. “I trusted you.” He wonders if it’s necessary, but it feels important to add, “I still do.” 

Enjolras doesn’t reply immediately and Grantaire deliberately doesn’t look over at him, takes a long swallow and then another of his coffee to forcibly stop himself from saying anything he’ll probably regret. When his drink is empty and Enjolras still hasn’t replied, he looks over to see Enjolras still flushed, colour still pleased and high in his cheeks. 

Grantaire, amazed and delighted, smiles back. 


	4. Chapter 4

Grantaire works the late shift for the next few days, not rolling out of his flat until mid afternoon. The sun is high in the sky as he walks to work and warm for the season, settling comfortably on Grantaire’s skin. Every day, he wonders how long it will take for Enjolras to be comfortable in this much daylight. Every evening, he texts Combeferre - _he okay?_ \- and Combeferre texts back: _well enough_.

After biting him, Enjolras has declined to spend his nights with Grantaire. He says it’s because he needs to work, that he can use the time his office is empty at night to catch up with what he’s been missing without putting anyone else at risk, but Grantaire doesn’t know how true that is. Combeferre has promised to keep an eye on him but he also tells Grantaire that Enjolras won’t take blood, won’t go to the blood bank, definitely won’t think about any other way.

“I think he’s afraid of the blood,” Combeferre tells him, over the phone, sounding worn out. “Of wanting it.”

//

The next morning, Enjolras is waiting outside Grantaire’s door when Grantaire comes tumbling out onto the streets, still basically half asleep. Switching from late to early shifts is always a nightmare. He slept through his alarm and hasn’t had time to shower so he’s jammed a beanie over the mess of his hair and brushed his teeth as hard as he could and hoped for the best. Judging by the look Enjolras gives him, the best was ambitious.

“Morning,” Enjolras says. “Coffee?”

Grantaire is too tired to argue. He takes the cup. “If you keep this up, I’m going to start expecting it,” he says. “And then one day you won’t show and I won’t have coffee and I’ll just be a mess and it’ll all be your fault.”

“You work in a coffee shop,” Enjolras points out.

“It just wouldn’t be the same without such a handsome deliveryman,” Grantaire says, before his tired brain-to-mouth filter has time to kick in.

Enjolras rolls his eyes but the set of his mouth looks pleased.

Grantaire has long since been able to read the changes in Enjolras’s face, knows that a furrowed brow means he’s got a headache coming and that a drawn thin mouth is as dangerous as calm seas under troubled skies. He knows that Enjolras has one smile for Combeferre and Courfeyrac and another, no less bright, for the rest of his friends. What he doesn’t know is what Enjolras means by _this_ , by bringing him coffee and walking him to work, by letting Grantaire’s half-assed attempts at charm coax a smile out of him. Enjolras might want him back? Grantaire doesn’t know what to do with that either.

He looks over at Enjolras. He’s still wearing a scarf. If he could, Grantaire would push that scarf aside, press his mouth to the mark it hides right here for the world to see, would kiss Enjolras’s mouth with just as much care.

But Enjolras said yes to the bite and still hides its mark, has bitten Grantaire but refused to return. As odd a descriptor as uncertain is for Enjolras, Grantaire isn’t going to think about kissing a man who isn’t sure what he wants.

“So,” he says instead, using the world’s most ominous opening word. “How’s the blood lust?”

Beside him, Enjolras’s step falters. Grantaire thinks _shit_ , thinks he’s misjudged everything horribly, and he’s readying a hasty apology before he looks over properly and sees he doesn’t need it. Enjolras is laughing.

“Manageable,” he says. “Thanks for asking.”

Grantaire inclines his head with the greatest amount of fake gravity he can project. “Any time.”

They walk in companionable silence for a while, letting the morning find itself around them. Grantaire sips at his coffee. It’s just how he likes it, and every time he raises the cup to his mouth he sees, out of the corner of his eye, Enjolras ducking his head like he’s pleased and trying to hide it. 

It’s too early for rush hour traffic and every driver behind the wheel of the cars that do pass looks about as enthused about the hour as Grantaire would be, were it not for Enjolras remarkably by his side. It feels right, though, the quiet start to the day, the gentle noise of occasional passing cars. It seems fitting, for this tentative beginning between the two of them: Grantaire hopeful; Enjolras, unexpectedly, shy.

All the times he’s drawn Enjolras in the past have been pulled from group memories - Enjolras standing to lead a meeting; Enjolras, deep in conversation; Enjolras, grinning over his shoulder, sharp and delighted - but now Grantaire could sketch private things, knows what Enjolras’s hands look like when they shake and the shape his mouth makes when he says, presented with a base necessity, _please_.

Grantaire doesn’t know what to do yet with the fact that Enjolras could have wanted him back all this time, that Enjolras could have been looking for him in a crowd as he tried not to let himself stare, but he’s going to wait until he does, until Enjolras stops hiding when Grantaire makes him smile and they both know what they want.

A few streets on, they pass a bakery, already open, the smell of bread and pastries sweet on the air. Grantaire’s stomach rumbles. He elbows Enjolras in the side before he can overthink it.

“Hey,” he says. “What’s your poison?”

“What?”

Grantaire gestures to the unshuttered shop. “Breakfast,” he says. “What’s your favourite?”

Enjolras frowns, a furrow appearing between his eyebrows like this is a pass or fail question. “I,” he starts, but Grantaire cuts him off.

“Gut reaction,” he insists. “Don’t overthink this shit. Here, I’ll make it multiple choice. Coffee or tea?”

Enjolras’s expression hasn’t smoothed out yet. “That’s not what you asked before,” he says. “And it depends.”

“You’re missing the point.” Grantaire pulls the two of them to a standstill at the side of the pavement even though there’s no one else really around. Habits borne from busy city streets are hard to break. “Pick one,” he says. “The first one to come to mind. Stop thinking about it and just tell me.”

“What’s this supposed to accomplish?”

Grantaire rolls his eyes again. That’s becoming its own habit around Enjolras. “Just,” he sighs. “Humour me?”

Enjolras folds his arms but settles his weight like a gesture of grudging acceptance. “Okay,” he says. “Ask me again.”

Grantaire grins. “I knew I’d get you,” he says, ignoring Enjolras’s groan. “Okay, coffee or tea?”

“Coffee,” Enjolras says, predictably.

“Red or black?”

“Red.”

Grantaire briefly considers asking _Combeferre or Courfeyrac_ just to see the look on Enjolras’s face but the inevitable paralytic indecision it would also produce would definitely be counterproductive.

“Staying in or going out?”

“Staying in,” says Enjolras, immediately.

“Robespierre or Napoleon?” 

“Robespierre.” Enjolras sounds so disgusted that Grantaire can’t stop himself from laughing.

“Okay, sorry, sorry, um,” fuck it, he’s going for it, “boxers or briefs?” 

“Briefs,” says Enjolras, admirably straight-faced. Grantaire is going to deal with that some other time because if he tries to do anything with that information now it’s just not going to go well.

He tries to think about literally anything other than Enjolras in just his briefs, yawning into fresh clothes in the morning or shedding them at night, stepping into the shower. Are there even other things to think about? Has anything else ever happened that could conceivably distract him from this before he just melts down right here on the pavement? Surely not.

But then - _You make me feel safe_ , Grantaire’s treacherous brain reminds him, and he can feel himself go red to the roots of his hair. With a wrenching effort, he scrambles back to safer ground.

“Cherry or vanilla?”

“Cherry.”

“Croissants or brioche?”

“Croissants.”

Grantaire throws his hands up in triumph. “There you go!” He grins. “Was that so hard?”

“I guess not,” Enjolras says. He’s smiling in a way Grantaire hasn’t provoked out of him before, soft at the edges. Grantaire doesn’t know what to do with it, so instead he fumbles for his wallet and heads into the bakery.

“Wait there,” he calls, over his shoulder, and as he’s turning back to the shop he sees Enjolras lean against the wall to do just that.

He emerges with two cherry danishes and hands one to Enjolras.

"Here," he says, and, when Enjolras seems about to protest, adds, "Shut up, you've bought me coffee. Take your pastry and like it."

There's an odd look on Enjolras’s face as he acquiesces and it takes Grantaire a moment to place it. It's as Enjolras bites into the danish that he gets it, remembering unbidden the day that Enjolras had been forcibly brought to the Musain looking rumpled and half-asleep, stumbling even on Combeferre's arm. Combeferre had sat him down and put a toasted sandwich in front of him, had said, "Eat this," in a tone that had brooked no argument.

Enjolras, mired in final exams, had clearly not deigned to stop to tend to any mortal needs for longer than Combeferre had liked. He'd taken a bite of his sandwich with a roll of his eyes and a darting look at Combeferre, exasperated and more than a little fond.

That's how he's looking at Grantaire now, Grantaire realizes. Like he's put upon but he likes it. 

//

On Friday, when it’s overcast in a way that suits Grantaire’s opinion of switching from late to early shifts without a day off between, Grantaire is groggy and trying to hide it by volunteering to man the coffee machine and avoiding as much human interaction as possible. It’s not like him and it doesn’t go unnoticed: his boss puts him back on the till after his break.

_people are very loud today_ , he sends to Eponine in a lull between customers, holding his phone low under the counter. _very loud and very stupid._

_they’re always loud and stupid_ , Eponine replies. _shut up and give them coffee. they’ll tip if you’re grumpy, you’ve got the right kind of face for it._

Grantaire’s tip jar doesn’t agree with her but it’s not worth the argument.

In his first break he makes himself the biggest coffee he can and loads it heavily with enough syrup to make Joly, the sweetest tooth he knows, wince. On a whim, he takes a picture of his monstrosity and sends it to Enjolras. _had to make my own :(_ he writes, and it’s only minutes before he gets back an obviously sarcastic _poor r_ in reply.

It’s a cold night but a clear one, so Grantaire spends his break bundled in his coat leaning against the coffee shop’s back wall, clutching his drink in one hand for warmth and smoking one of the last cigarettes he has on him down to the root. The stars are bright and he wishes he had a better camera on him than his phone. 

When he’s gearing up to go back for the last few hours, stubbing his cigarette out on the wall, his phone buzzes in his pocket. He jams his empty cup between his arm and his side, elbowing the door open so he can check the message without being late back. This display of coordination becomes futile when the text is from Enjolras: Grantaire stops still in the corridor to read it.

It’s a picture of a chipped white mug, the sort of inoffensive design particular to bulk-bought office supplies, full to the brim of black coffee even though it’s basically ten at night. It’s on a very cluttered desk, paper covering almost every bit of the visible surface. _do you make better coffee than this?_ Enjolras has sent.

_probably_ , Grantaire replies. _unless you made that? because then definitely._

For someone who drinks as much coffee as he does, Enjolras is endearingly bad at making it. It’s hard to screw up instant coffee but, somehow, he manages it. Grantaire had drunk a cup of the stuff out of politeness the first time he’d been offered it, relatively soon after Jehan had first dragged him to the Musain, but then not even a background attraction to its maker could compel him to ingest any more. 

“Apollo,” he had exclaimed, gesturing unwisely with his not quite empty cup. “How can a man with a face like a god serve coffee like a swine?”

Enjolras had only given him the finger amiably enough, and Combeferre had leaned over to pat Grantaire on the back.

“You’re a man now, R,” ‘Ferre had said, and Grantaire had grinned, and it had been like a rite of passage, like he’d drunk of the wine, eaten the seeds, anchored himself firmly in this world a step away from the one he’d known before.

_I’m the only one here_ , Enjolras tells him now. _no way out of my own coffee, I’m afraid._

“Gran _taire_.”

It’s his boss, calling through from the front of the shop, and Grantaire has to shove his phone back into his pocket and go back to work. He thinks about it for the hour that’s left of his shift, Enjolras’s conversational _I’m afraid_ sitting in his pocket and the way, days before, he had said _I was scared and I wanted to feel safe_ like Grantaire was his obvious solution.

While he’s cleaning up, Grantaire thumbs out a quick message. _what’s E’s work address????_

Combeferre is quick to answer, even has directions - useful ones, because he’s the one of their friendship group that’s allowed to mapread when they’re all together - and finishes with _I won’t ask why. ;)_

The winky face feels like a tiny betrayal. 

“I expected this from Courfeyrac, not you,” Grantaire tells his phone, like it’s going to do any good, and sets about the coffee machine.

//

The takeout place across the street from Grantaire’s coffee shop is open till the early hours and does some of the best fries he knows. The girl behind the counter recognises him by now, so when he asks for double his usual order she just raises her impressive eyebrows at him like _I won’t even ask_ and hands him the bag with a wink. Juggling the food and the coffee isn’t really a problem until he gets to Enjolras’s building and finds that it’s a buzzer entry system, whereby he has to enact a maneuver of contortionist extremes to free up a hand.

The street around him is dark and empty and the circle of fluorescent light thrown out from behind the building’s glass door feels alarmingly like a spotlight, the cross of a reticule. Grantaire shivers and doesn’t look around. He knows what could be out there in the black of the night and has no desire to see it coming.

“Hello?” comes Enjolras’s voice, over the entry system. Even though Grantaire was expecting it, he still jumps.

“Hi, um, it’s me,” he says, leaning over his bag of food in the vague direction of the intercom. “Grantaire, I mean. That’s who me is.”

What a great, sensible sentence. 

“Thanks for that,” says Enjolras, wry even through the intercom crackle. “Come on in.”

The lift inside is broken, because of course it is, and Enjolras’s office is on the fourth floor. Apparently, the time it takes Grantaire to climb four flights of stairs is also the amount of time it takes Enjolras to get sucked back into work. This works in Grantaire’s favour: when he pushes through the door to Enjolras’s office floor, he gets to see Enjolras before Enjolras sees him.

It’s an open-plan office and at this time of night it’s empty save for Enjolras, alone at his desk near the middle of the room. The overhead lights are on but not all of the bulbs work and Enjolras is lit mostly by a desk lamp. There’s paper all over his desk and a furrow between his eyebrows and it’s probably stupid but there’s something about the big room and Enjolras’s little desk, a one man boat in a dark sea, that hurts Grantaire to look at. 

Grantaire is profoundly grateful for the moment he has to wipe his face blank again.

“Hi,” he says, when he’s pretty sure his voice won’t give him away. “I brought coffee.”

Enjolras looks up as if startled even though Grantaire just called up, like, a minute ago. He looks tired and paler than Grantaire would prefer, like the lack of blood has banked all his usual fire, but his smile is obviously, illuminatingly, genuine. “Hi,” he says, and sets his pen down.

For his own continued ability to continue this conversation, Grantaire is just going to pretend that having Enjolras easily give him his whole attention doesn’t go straight to his heart. He winds through the other desks to Enjolras’s, manages to pass him a coffee cup without dropping anything on him, his ancient office keyboard, or his many, doubtlessly very important, pieces of paper.

“Thank you?” Enjolras says, like he’s not sure if he’s saying the right thing. 

Grantaire shrugs. “You seemed pretty committed to the idea of buying my friendship with coffee,” he says. “So I thought I’d return the favour.”

Enjolras frowns. “I wasn’t trying to buy your friendship,” he says. “I just thought -”

Grantaire has to cut him off for his own sanity. “Oh my god,” he says, “I know. I was trying to make it less weird that I just brought you dinner.”

Enjolras eyes the takeout box like it’s liable to explode and he’s not quite sure why. It’s not the most flattered Grantaire has ever felt. 

“But why did you?” Enjolras asks. 

Grantaire hesitates.

He remembers too clearly what it felt like, sitting on his own hands to stop himself reaching for his keys, knowing that if he let himself leave the flat he’d go straight to a liquor store no matter how much he tried to convince himself otherwise. He knows it’ll get easier for Enjolras soon, knows his first week is almost up and his body will start adjusting to the way it works now, after the bite, but, god, for now there’s nothing Enjolras can do to keep himself away from what he wants. He just has to look his friends in the eye and resist, ignore the pulse of blood in their veins just inches and years of friendship away.

Grantaire is worried, feels it like an itch under his skin, insistent, and the circles under Enjolras’s eyes aren’t helping. Enjolras brings Grantaire coffee but won’t give himself what he needs. 

_Because you won’t have any fucking blood_ , Grantaire valiantly doesn’t snap, but Enjolras must see it on his face or something because his own expression sets hard, a slammed door between this tentative moment and the cold touch of the next. _Fuck it_ , thinks Grantaire, watching Enjolras gear up for a fight, _just fuck it_. If the two of them have proved anything over the years, it’s that they won’t let each other avoid something just because they’d rather.

“Because you need to eat _something_ ,” Grantaire says, plain as that, “and if you won’t let that be blood then you can at least have this.”

Enjolras sounds like it’s taking all he has to keep his voice even and there’s nothing left over to make himself sound civil. “What is it to you if I’ve had blood or not?”

The laugh punches out of Grantaire before he can stop it. “Come on,” he says. “You want it, right?”

Enjolras’s jaw sets. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“Yes, you do.” Grantaire isn’t going to let him off the hook on this one. “I know what it’s like, remember?”

“I hardly think that’s the same,” says Enjolras. 

His certainty rankles and Grantaire lets it show. “No,” he says, very deliberately, “it’s not the same. I chose to get better, not keep making myself worse.”

Enjolras was already pale but he turns chalk white, his own particular furious pallor. “It’s my choice,” he hisses. “You don’t have the right to tell me what I should do.”

“I’m not trying to tell you what to do,” Grantaire says, raising his voice despite himself. He evens it out with an effort. “I’m just -” he sets the food down on a blessedly empty patch of the table and spreads his hands. “I’m just _trying_.”

The words hang between them for a second, Enjolras’s awful, angry, _you don’t have the right_ and Grantaire’s useless olive branch, _I’m trying_. It feels like neither of them breathe. Enjolras’s face is twisted like an animal’s and Grantaire can hear his own heart pounding in the silence.

“Trying to what?” Enjolras says, eventually, dangerously calm. “Provoke me into biting you?”

It’s been almost a week since Enjolras was bitten. The only blood he’s had has been from Grantaire’s own veins. 

“No,” Grantaire says. He keeps his voice quiet with a wrench of effort, chooses his words very carefully. “No, but if you asked, I’d say yes.”

Enjolras reels back. “You don’t mean it,” he says. His voice sounds pinched.

“If I didn’t mean it,” Grantaire says, “I wouldn’t have said it.”

It’s hypocritical, he knows - he’s said a lot of things to Enjolras that aren’t true, pushing at devil’s advocacy until Enjolras’s argument is proved water-tight or springs a fatal leak - but the blow lands where it was meant. Enjolras sets his jaw.

“You can’t tell me I don’t know what I’m doing,” Grantaire continues. “We’ve done this before.”

_Before_. Grantaire has had Enjolras’s teeth in his throat before. He offered up his neck to Enjolras before Enjolras had even said _we’re friends_ like it was an incontrovertible truth, before he knew that _he_ was Enjolras’s answer when the question was _who will make me feel most safe_.

Now - Grantaire isn’t going to force him, won’t make him do anything he doesn’t want, but, god, he almost wants to, make Enjolras drain him dry. He almost wants to open the wound on his neck just to make Enjolras drink from it, to smear his own blood over Enjolras’s dry mouth just to get some colour back in his peaked face. He wants to take Enjolras’s face in his hands right there in his drab functional office and kiss him until they both taste blood.

There was a time when Grantaire would willingly done that, would have offered himself as fuel. But now - now he knows that wouldn’t help either of them and Grantaire isn’t the person that drinks away any thought of his own survival any more.

He gets to his feet, suddenly sick of them both. 

“Look, whatever,” he says, turning to go. “The food’s there if you want it. Take it or leave it, it’s no skin off my nose.”

He’s pushing open the doors to the corridor when Enjolras calls, an edge to his voice, “R, _wait_.”

Grantaire, automatically, stops.

Enjolras is storming across the office to Grantaire, his face bunched and unreadable. Grantaire opens his mouth to say something sharp, burn the bridges he and Enjolras have been trying to build, but before he can say anything at all, Enjolras knocks him back against the doorframe and kisses him.

Of course it was going to happen like this, Grantaire thinks. It seems inevitable now, like one day Grantaire was always going to walk away and Enjolras was always going to kiss him for it, like they both needed to know Grantaire could turn Enjolras down before Enjolras offered himself up.

Enjolras’s mouth is hot and demanding against his and Grantaire groans into it, his body curving up against Enjolras’s on pure, old, instinct, his hands coming up to clutch at Enjolras’s hips, drag him closer.

Enjolras gasps when they break apart, and Grantaire presses their foreheads together, breathes steadily in. He curls a hand around the side of Enjolras’s throat, gentle. His palm brushes the raggedly healing edges of Enjolras’s bite; he can feel Enjolras’s pulse rocketing under his skin. 

“R,” Enjolras whispers. His voice cracks. “I want - “ His gaze flits from Grantaire’s mouth to the mark on his neck, the places that Enjolras has had his teeth. Grantaire thinks about Enjolras denying himself blood but choosing Grantaire. 

“It’s okay,” Grantaire whispers back. “You can want to. _I_ want you to,” and Enjolras shudders like a cracked pane of glass.

//

Enjolras’s room isn’t a huge space but it’s not cramped either, has dark blue walls that Enjolras tells him are leftover from the previous tenant and a window with a rooftop view that Grantaire immediately wants to sketch. There are textbooks on the floor and novels by the bed, clothes heaped on a chair in the corner, and it’s so weirdly endearing, this unsuspected messy side of Enjolras, that Grantaire kisses his shoulder on a quick, fond whim. Enjolras startles at the touch so Grantaire draws back immediately but Enjolras stops him with a hand to his wrist and a small, pleased, smile.

They sit side by side on the bed. Grantaire rubs his hands on his thighs, suddenly awkward. “So,” he tries. “How do you want to…” He stops. It’s an unfair question.

Instead, he pushes his sweater sleeve up to his elbow and carefully ignores the way Enjolras’s eyes track his veins as his bare skin is revealed, inch by inch.

“Here,” Grantaire says, and holds out his arm, wrist upwards, to Enjolras. “Take my wrist.”

Enjolras looks from Grantaire’s wrist to his face like he’s unsure if he should. It’s funny, really, that Grantaire has spent so long wondering what Enjolras would look like if he were a modicum less certain about everything he ever said, if every atom of his being wasn’t comprised of the pure and ardent love for his cause and that now that he knows, Grantaire would willingly forget. 

Grantaire nods. “You can,” he says. “I’m asking you to.”

Enjolras takes hold of Grantaire’s wrist with tentative hands. He’s so careful it makes Grantaire’s chest ache.

“I won’t break,” Grantaire insists, to help quell it.

Enjolras looks sharply up at him. His eyes are black from pupil to iris, an animal scenting its prey on the wind, but still he asks, “Is this hurting you? I don’t want - “

“ _I_ want,” Grantaire says, again. “I really -.” He swallows. Enjolras doesn’t look away, doesn’t let go of Grantaire’s wrist. He must be able to feel the way Grantaire’s pulse is pounding under his fingers but he doesn’t react, just smoothes his thumb over the base of Grantaire’s palm, waiting for what he has to say.

“I want you,” Grantaire whispers, the admission coming out of him quieter than he’d expected, and Enjolras flutters his eyes shut like he’s committing the moment to memory. “Please. Do it.”

Carefully, slowly, Enjolras raises Grantaire’s wrist to his mouth. Grantaire is expecting the blossom of pain from the bite, the sharp points of Enjolras’s teeth, but instead Enjolras presses a kiss to Grantaire’s skin. He sounds near reverent when he says Grantaire’s name, bent over Grantaire’s wrist like he’s declaring allegiance, and Grantaire closes his eyes, and Enjolras bites.

Grantaire is expecting the bite to hurt like the first time, the sting like nothing he’d ever felt before. This is immediately different, dizzying, his vision slipping like one, two, four drinks too many. It’s _good_ , a hot, sudden pulse of good that makes him feel gasp, sharp and needy, in a way he’d be more embarrassed about if Enjolras wasn’t groaning against the thin skin at his wrist.

Grantaire has heard the stories, they’ve all heard the stories, but no one ever told him about _this_ , the way the bite could thunder through him, a storm cloud rolling through his body with nowhere safe for it to break. The bite on his neck throbs. Enjolras’s mouth on his wrist is insistent. 

There’s a buzzing in his ears, his pulse is a crescendo under his skin, and he clutches at Enjolras’s back with desperate hands, keeping him in place. “Please,” he says again, urging Enjolras on. “Enjolras, yes, _god_ \- “

Enjolras makes a noise, sharp and desperate, that is going to stay with Grantaire until someone fucking Eternal Sunshines it out of him. Grantaire wants him _so much_ , wants to fist his hand in Enjolras’s stupid perfect messy curls and pull his head back to see his red, red mouth, wants to drag him up and crash their mouths together until they bruise from it.

As Grantaire thinks it, Enjolras’s hips jerk forward and he pulls abruptly away, dropping Grantaire’s wrist like it’s burnt him.

“I’m sorry,” he gasps, not meeting Grantaire’s eyes. He sounds _wrecked_ , like he’s run a marathon or smoked a hundred cigarettes, like Grantaire has given him exactly what he needed but it hasn’t been a relief. 

Grantaire thinks about kissing him, wants it so much that it hurts his chest. It would be so easy to move just that bit closer, fast like he wants to, and taste his own blood on Enjolras’s lips. Enjolras is staring at him like he wants that too, like he could die for it if someone asked him to.

Enjolras is sitting right at the edge of the bed. It would be so easy, Grantaire thinks, to get on his knees for him, to push Enjolras’s thighs apart and bow his head, unzip Enjolras’s jeans and get his mouth on him, wring noises out of him and let Enjolras pull at his hair. _God_. Grantaire’s heartbeat is still rocketing. Enjolras must be able to hear it.

Enjolras’s eyes are still so dark and he’s looking at Grantaire now like if he could get his mouth on him now, he’d leave a different kind of mark. “I’m sorry,” he says again. “Is that - is this okay?”

“God,” Grantaire manages, hoarse-voiced, “ _Yes_ ,” and leans forward fast, presses his mouth to Enjolras’s. Enjolras makes a noise like he’s been shot and arches towards him, kissing back with all the ferocity of a man released from bonds. Together, they taste like metal and desperation and they kiss messily enough, dirtily enough, that it’s hard to tell if Grantaire’s mouth is wet from Enjolras’s or his own blood smearing across his mouth.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ha ha ha, remember when I thought this was going to be done in like 5 chapters? OH SWEET SUMMER CHILD. I still have everything worked out more or less, it's just going to... be more words than I first thought. 
> 
> thanks so much for all your comments and kudos, guys! you should see my delighted face :3

**Author's Note:**

> Trigger warnings: mild blood & gore because vampires. Discussion of past alcoholism and the feelings of addiction. Discussion of recovery. 
> 
> You can also find me on [tumblr](http://mooging62.tumblr.com) should you want to witness my continued slow trip into this stupid boyfriends pit of emotions.


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